I appreciate that the Bill before us will provide for revisions to corporate governance arrangements within the HSE. I welcome this. If ever an agency needed governance reforms, it was the HSE. There have been too many incidents of governance failures at this agency. I refer to the CervicalCheck scandal, which revealed 162 women were not informed about missed abnormalities in their smear tests; the 2023 nursing home review, which revealed serious governance lapses after a resident was raped by a staff member in the HSE nursing home; and we will all remember the treatment of the whistleblowers who faced suspension and disciplinary action for raising concerns of financial misconduct and care home abuses. However, I have concerns that this Bill will do little to implement meaningful change in respect of its stated aim of exercising the highest standards of prudent and effective financial and budgetary management. If the Government really wanted to enhance budgetary governance, it would introduce the multi-annual funding framework it promised in the programme for Government. Sinn Féin will be tabling amendments on Committee Stage to provide for multi-annual funding and for staffing frameworks, because that is the right thing to do. This is the only way proper planning can take place and efficiencies can be made. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister for Health to please address persistent staffing issues across the HSE. The Government claims the recruitment embargo in the HSE has been lifted since last July but there have been no positive effects in Mayo. I met representatives of the INMO last week again. In fact, I have very direct experience of being in the emergency department in Mayo University Hospital in the last number of weeks. I commend the staff there for the job they are doing but they are expected to do that job even though there are not enough of them. I know the Minister wants to answer me back and I know she cannot in this situation. She should please let me tell her that there are not enough staff members.
Sentiment score: 0.15
The INMO is telling untruths, then. It is telling untruths, as it says there are not safe staffing levels. You can hold up whatever documents you like, Minister.
Sentiment score: 0.01
The Minister can hold up whatever document she likes, but I am telling her that there are not enough staff in Mayo University Hospital in the emergency department section to provide safe service there. I am also telling the Minister that it is a deterrent for so many people who want to, and probably need to, go to hospital. They want to do everything to stay out of hospital. Those nurses and other staff members are absolutely run off their feet. They are expected to operate on a corridor with trolleys each side of it, patients in pain moaning, looking for help and trying to get a bed when they cannot get a bed, yet the Minister is telling me the hospital has enough staff. It does not have enough staff. I can tell the Minister that. I am very grateful for the service the staff provide but there is not enough of them there. Whatever the Minister is doing, I ask her to please address that and to look at it. I was not even going to bring this up but the Minister saw the women in the Public Gallery last night for the endometriosis care motion. The Minister pointed out phantom clinics they were to go to in all these places and implied there were so many services about the place that they just were not going to. Why then are those women in such pain? The Minister spoke about them choosing to go to abroad when the services are not here for them. The Minister can shake her head all she wants but she needs to recognise what is happening on the ground. The health of the women who were here last night is deteriorating. The organs in their bodies are being eaten by endometriosis and the Minister is saying there are enough services and support.
Sentiment score: 0.08
I am sorry but the Minister needs to get with the programme.
Sentiment score: -0.04