Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I reiterate my acknowledgement and that of the Government that what is happening in some accident and emergency departments - not in all of them but in too many- is not acceptable. It causes immense distress for patients and families and it is a very difficult working environment for our healthcare professionals. It is a very serious situation and one we have had for many years. I acknowledge it is not good enough and unacceptable and that it is causing great distress.

We must also bear in mind the context for what is happening this year. Healthcare systems all over Europe are facing different versions of what is being experienced here. This is happening in Northern Ireland, in Britain and in countries right across Europe. These are countries analysts would say have more beds, or more this or that or where things are run differently. This is happening right across Europe, but this does not excuse the situation or mean that we do not do everything we can to fix it. It is important that we remember the context for this situation, which is a perfect storm of three respiratory illnesses hitting the country at a level that has never happened before and which is causing huge pressure right across Europe.

I am sorry our colleague from Sinn Féin has left. I sat here listening to some extraordinary language from the Opposition about our healthcare services, which is, ultimately, a reflection on those running the services. Regarding the fatalism we have heard today around our services, we would swear there is not a doctor, a nurse, a GP or a health and social care professional anywhere in the country providing a great service for patients. I want to refute that. There are healthcare professionals all over this country, in hospitals, in general practices, in primary care, in community care and in nursing homes, who provide the very best of care every day. The HSE cares for 30,000 men, women and children daily and they receive excellent care. I am not talking now about the people waiting in accident and emergency departments. Up to November, our hospital system provided 4.2 million episodes of treatment to men, women and children. The vast majority of people I speak to say that, when they get access, the services are excellent. You would swear that there is not a medical or nursing graduate in the county who is interested in working in our healthcare service. If the rhetoric from the Opposition were true, that would be fair enough but, of course, it is not true. This scorched earth description of our public health service is simply not true but our healthcare professionals have to listen to it every single day. Let me tell the House what they tell me. They tell me that it is exhausting for them to hear the kind of language we have heard from Opposition Members here today. Nobody is denying that there are issues in respect of access at some of our emergency departments and that our waiting lists are too long. However, it is exhausting for our healthcare workers to listen to the kind of language we heard here today and they hear it every single day.

Our Sinn Féin colleague would have us believe that there is no nursing student in the country who wants to work in the HSE so I checked. Some 90% to 95% of this year's nursing graduates are considering offers to work in the HSE.