Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In response to the criticism of the health service, we need to be careful because over 100,000 very dedicated and committed people work in the health service. We need to keep in mind the fact that they must work over Christmas while the rest of us are at home. Every week 61,500 people attend outpatient departments and a further 23,000 people attend the accident and emergency departments. That means over 84,000 go through the hospitals system every week and that is in addition to the number of people who go through the system and are in beds. To suggest that the health service is crumbling is unfair to the people who work in it because they provide a comprehensive service and work extremely hard. It is wrong to suggest that 100,000 people are not doing their job.