Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I commend Senator Colette Kelleher for sharing her personal testimony with us. It is very brave and courageous for a person to share his or her personal story with the House. It is very difficult and I congratulate the Senator on doing so. Since she entered the House she has been a very strong advocate for maternity, gynaecology and obstetric services at Cork Univeristy Maternity Hospital.

I commend our colleagues in Sinn Féin for introducing the motion which has been framed in a very sincere and genuine way in an effort to advise and support the Government in improving health services and the way they are managed. I would be interested to hear from the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, and others about the cost of introducing such a system. There is significant capacity to adopt new technology to ensure better outcomes for patients and that the limited resources available will be applied in a much more sensible way. Senator Colm Burke is correct when he says there has been an issue in recent decades with capital investment in health services. One of the deficits is in the application of modern technology in the way the health service is organised. There is huge potential for digitisation and computerisation. I have some sympathy, as I said on a number of occasions in recent weeks, with the Minister for Health and his ministerial colleagues in dealing with the scandalous problem of waiting lists. I accept in good faith the Minister's bona fides and that he is as disturbed and moved as the rest of us on hearing of the tens of thousands who have been waiting far too long for basic treatments or diagnostic services and often very complex treatments that, in some cases, are life saving or, in every sense, offer life changing possibilities.

I note that Sinn Féin has acknowledged and recognised that, whether we like it, there is a private element in the way the hospital systems operate. Many of us in this House would prefer if that was not the case, but that is not how the health system has evolved organically since the foundation of the State, or, as some argue, before. We might not like it, but that is the way the system has evolved. In the short term and the absence of a radical restructuring of the health service, we have to look at how we can use capacity in the private system in dealing with public hospital waiting lists. We need to resource the National Treatment Purchase Fund to ensure those on public waiting lists will be treated. However, the over-reliance on the National Treatment Purchase Fund in addressing the waiting list problem is just a sticking plaster and in many ways lets the HSE off the hook, although it is not the panacea to all our ills. We should never lose sight of the fact that the Government and the HSE which is resourced by the taxpayer have the responsibility to fix the deficits in the health service. It is only through better management - a change of focus in how we allocate the resources we have available - and the recruitment and retention of key staff and key expertise in the health service that we will able to fix the problem. While it represents an opportunity to move people through diagnosis and treatment over a short period, National Treatment Purchase Fund is not the panacea.

I accept that the Minister for Health is constantly on the hunt for additional resources.The former Minister for Health and my colleague, Senator James Reilly, knows what it is like to battle for the resources required for the health service. Every Minister for Health knows what it is like. I know that every Minister for Health has worked extremely hard to resource the health service in the way in which it should be resourced. We know that in cash terms the health service received the largest budget in 2017 that it has ever received to apply to the HSE and all that agency is responsible for.

I mentioned last week, when the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, was here for our discussions on the national children's hospital, that I am concerned we will be unable to meet the growing needs of our population in terms of health treatments and our responsibilities to Irish citizens in terms of the public health service if we do not get a handle on some of the escalating costs in the health service. What do I mean by that? I mean in particular the projected cost of the national children's hospital and the approximate €350 million that appears to be owed to hospital consultants. All that is before we open negotiations with consultants and GPs on new contracts and before we seriously try to fix the nurses' dispute and the dispute with SIPTU members in ancillary health service support roles. I remain to be convinced that the resources will be available even with the anticipated levels of economic growth we expect to continue, given all those challenges the health service will have. Will the Minister, either now or in the very near future, reassure the House that we can cover these bills without it having serious implications for the management and operation of the health service and our ambition to see it improved?

I wish the Committee on the Future of Healthcare well in its work. Its creation is an important advance. I do not believe that any citizen in this Republic ever accepts that one single political party or a number of Members of this House or the other House have a silver bullet to fix the problems associated with the health service. I am glad to see genuine efforts being made to develop a consensus on what our health service should look like and how it should be managed. The difficultly will arise when hard decisions must be made on how the health service is resourced.