Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an Aire. I apologise at the outset for missing the Minister's contribution, but I was following it in the office. I hope he does not mind me beginning on a slightly different subject, and then I will return to the substantive point we are discussing here today. Yesterday in the Seanad I raised the case of young Dáithi MacGabhann from Belfast. He is waiting on a heart transplant. The Minister will be familiar with the progress on the human tissue Bill in this jurisdiction. Dáithi and his family campaigned for similar legislation around soft opt-out organ donation and achieved great success when Stormont was unified in support of the call. A law was passed that because known as Dáithi's Law. Due to the absence of the Assembly and the Executive, the family has to campaign again and is working to ensure that the Secretary of State brings forward legislation. The Minister knows that organ is an all-Ireland issue in terms of waiting times and generally. Dáithi's family have asked me if the Minister would be prepared to meet with them to hear about their campaign and to join the calls of this House and many others in supporting it.I will correspond with the Minister on that. I know they are keen to discuss the case with him.

I will return to today's statements. In the past week, we have had two very dramatic examples of the impact a system in free-fall has on this society, with a flailing Government presiding over a health service teetering on the brink of collapse. On one hand, we had thousands of people marching and protesting to show their support for patients and health service staff while, on the other, we had a damning report into child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, by the Mental Health Commission. The commission's comprehensive report identified serious risk to the safety and well-being of children accessing CAMHS. In an article in The Irish Timesthe journalist, Ms Kitty Holland, stated:

The report finds poor monitoring of medication; children waiting days in emergency departments for psychiatric care ... exhausted, overwhelmed and inadequately supervised staff; psychiatrists not trained to work with children; poor risk management; poor clinical governance; and chaotic, paper-based record-keeping.

This is an appalling dereliction of duty by the Government and those in CAMHS responsible for the welfare and well-being of children. The thousands of people on protests gave a very clear response to the Government's prolonged and systemic incompetence in handling the health service. The message from the protestors was very clear. They want a health service that is localised and capable of responding to people's various needs, including the peaks and emergencies that are part and parcel of a modern healthcare service. They want a health service that does not exist on a long-term drip of continual crisis, one that has the planned capacity to look after its patients, whether children or adults, wherever they are located on the spectrum of the health service, from the doors of accident and emergency departments to the operating theatre. The protestors know what the Government is pretending it does not know, namely, that this Government, whether it is led by a Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, has woefully failed all those who work in the health service and all those being treated in the healthcare system. The protestors know the Government is pretending it does not know there is a direct link between the crises in the health service and housing sector in which a chronic shortage of housing to rent or buy is coupled with a cost-of-living crisis.

The housing disaster is preventing many healthcare workers from coming home and driving out our young graduates. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, in a recent report found that 65% of nursing graduates are strongly considering emigrating and 33% are considering leaving the major cities in this State due to the cost of living. In 2021, 62% of first-time registrants with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland were non-European workers, which highlighted the lack of supply and poor retention of Irish-trained graduates.

The health service is fundamentally broken. It is only held together by the goodwill and hard labour of healthcare workers who are battling this crisis daily. The current system is delivering the wrong care in the wrong place at the wrong time. It can be fixed, however. The Government needs to immediately make use of all public and private healthcare infrastructure to alleviate pressure on the overall health service. It needs to sort out the chronic shortage of affordable housing to rent or buy and tackle the cost of living, which would be an incentive for graduates to stay and for those abroad to return home.

Other measures the Government can introduce include more hospital inpatient and community beds; more acute, subacute and community step-down beds; more front-line doctors, nurses and allied health and social care professionals; long-term planning for workforce development; and a health service that works smarter and embraces technological innovation, acting speedily to resolve the constant shortage of medicines. All these measures will significantly reduce overcrowding in the healthcare system. It is inhumane, unsafe and undignified. The staff, patients and relatives of those in the health service, many of whom were protesting last week, deserve much better. Taxpayers deserve much better. The Government needs to act swiftly and effectively.