THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) should be directed to produce a plan rejecting front-line cuts in the health services, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said.
He urged Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, “in the final hours left to him in the powerful position as Taoiseach”, to take Minister for Health Mary Harney aside and make the direction.
“If he does that before he leaves office, he will have done at least some good, given that we have a health crisis being presided over by the Minister for Health, who will not accept any responsibility for it, but passes the buck continually to the HSE.”
Mr Ahern said he wanted to state again what he had said many times.
“In the 53 public and acute hospitals, we have provided, and continue to provide, additional resources.
“It has not been a question of cutbacks in the service. We have continued working with the trade unions to deal with the issue of last September’s embargo, and we have delivered increased capital expenditure into several developments in those hospitals and will continue to do that.”
Like every organisation, said Mr Ahern, the HSE had to live within its budget agreed in its own plan.
“It has to manage that throughout the year. Last year there was criticism in the House when it only started doing that in the last quarter.”
Mr Ahern said that there were 130,000 people working full-time or part-time in the public health service.
“There is €200 million on the capital programme for this year, which has been allocated out. We have increased the number of beds.”
Earlier, Mr Kenny raised the case of a 13-year-old girl suffering from depression and anxiety who had taken an overdose. She had been told that she would have to wait for up to six weeks for a hospital bed.
“The family, one of hundreds, must live with those circumstances every minute of every day.
“Does the Taoiseach not feel a sense of guilt that, in spite of expenditure of €15 billion on the health system, a depressed 13-year-old girl, with the potential for self-harm, cannot be given a bed in a hospital for the next four to six weeks?”
He said that they remembered other tragic cases of people who had to wait for treatment and who were, unfortunately, no longer with us.
Mr Ahern said that he did not have the details of each individual case.
“However, I can tell Deputy Kenny that regarding the consultants’ contract, which has just been completed, 15 of the contracts are for those consultants who are involved in child adolescent services.
“This is a substantial number of consultants. There are also extra beds in St Vincent’s, Fairview, Dublin, in St Stephen’s, Cork, and in Galway.”
Mr Ahern said that the daily average number of patients awaiting admissions in the month just gone was 107, compared with 105 a year ago, which was practically the same.
The average daily figure for April to date was higher than the reported average for the same period last year. Reasons for that included the continuation of the cold weather.
Mr Kenny said that he gave the Taoiseach credit for a response which was more caring than the one given by Tánaiste Brian Cowen, who had said that to raise an individual case was facile and simplistic.
“Health is not just about economics and statistics. Politics is always about people. I will make no apology for continuing to raise individual serious cases in this House, the forum of the people.”
