TÁNAISTE BRIAN Cowen has insisted in the Dáil that the Government is trying "to bring reforms into the health service that will deal with many of the perennial problems we are facing".
He also criticised Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, claiming that if his "tactic is to come in and talk about a particular case where there is a difficulty and suggest that the sorting out of that difficulty alone is to sort the health service is a rather simplistic and facile approach and analysis".
The row started when Mr Kenny raised the case of the 76-year-old woman with Alzheimer's who suffered a heart attack and had been on a trolley in the Mater hospital since Monday.
The patient was yesterday afternoon offered a bed, but Mr Kenny said it was a "national scandal" and "an appalling situation". He added that "we are spending €15 billion on health", and he warned that the recruitment embargo that prevented specialists being recruited "will result in a disastrous situation sooner rather than later".
Minister for Health Mary Harney had two years ago described accident and emergency units around the country as a "national disgrace". But he called on the Tánaiste to apologise to the family of the elderly woman and to "send out the Minister for Health to do something about this".
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said there was "nothing facile or superficial about this issue". The patient in the Mater "has been feeling so bad about her condition that she has been asking her family to allow her to die". Insisting it was not an isolated case, he said he had visited the Mater a fortnight ago with colleague Joe Costello, who has held a weekly protest at the city centre hospital for the past five years.
Mr Gilmore said the A&E was overcrowded for staff and patients on a Saturday afternoon - and that was nothing compared to Friday and Saturday nights. He appealed to the Minister to sort it out: "It would not be funny if any of our mothers was lying on a trolley like that."
Mr Cowen rejected calls for a new minister for health and said "the reforms have to continue". Much needed primary care and out-of-hours GP services were now being provided in the north-inner city, which was taking pressure off the Mater. "Improvements are being made," he stressed.
