Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend RTÉ on its "Prime Time" investigates programme last night. One wonders if it is RTÉ or the HSE that is running our health service. We owe a debt of gratitude to Una Smith. I agree that there are fantastic consultants in our hospital system. Many of them are doing a really good job but at the end of the day, 44,864 public patients were not seen because of what is happening in the system and that is a serious problem.There is a serious question for an Taoiseach to answer too. Between 2014 and 2016, he was the Minister for Health. That was where the buck stopped. Why did he stop collection of data about the non-compliance of contracts and what was the reasoning behind it? Did he have that information or did he delegate the responsibility? It is fine if he delegated the responsibility but why did he suddenly stop it at that point? If this is to be fought legally with regard to breach of contracts with individual consultants or such, then having that data is absolutely necessary. He needs to explain that. What is happening within the system, and the way the funding system is set up with hospitals being reliant on private practice cannot continue. The National Treatment Purchase Fund that was advocated and championed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is not working. It incentivises more of this carry-on where public patients lose out all the time when private patients can be seen. We need an absolute separation of public and private services rather than having public resources be used for private patients.