I should like to thank the Chair for allowing me to raise this issue, and also the Minister of State for coming to the House to reply. I have been informed by the Western Health Board that approximately 125 patients have been investigated at University College Hospital, Galway, and are on the waiting list for open heart surgery. I understand that some of them are in a serious condition and have been on the waiting list for over two years for admission to the Mater Hospital, Dublin, where this type of surgery is carried out. This is a horrendous state of affairs which any country with a health service that is claimed to be modern and efficient simply cannot stand over or condone. One of the key planks of the Fianna Fáil Party when they went before the electorate seeking a mandate in 1987 was that "health cuts hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped". The billboards and the hoardings shouted it from on high. Graphic illustrations were advanced in television advertisements. Clear unequivocal commitments were given by the Minister and his colleagues that all health queues would be eliminated.
I spoke to a doctor today who told me that he has 25 patients waiting for limb replacements. The patients are in chronic pain and their slim hopes have now been dashed by virtue of the fact that all orthopaedic surgery of a replacement nature at Merlin Park Hospital, Galway, has been suspended until next October at least. In my constitutency an elderly pensioner living on her own is waiting for a simple cataract operation. She cannot read or watch television and has not been given any indication of when she will be called for this simple procedure to restore her sight. Another person has been waiting for a heart by-pass operation for the past 18 months and has been told that in the meantime he should not get excited. I have in my possession a letter in respect of a teacher in County Mayo who was seen by the senior cardiac consultant on 21 September 1990 at the Mater Hospital. She was put on the waiting list for mitral valve replacement surgery at that hospital, but to date she has not been called and there is no indication as to when she will be called.
Each case is personal and individual. The loss or restriction of sight as a result of non-availability of cataract operations and the sheer excruciating pain of trying to hobble on worn hip or knee joints is something which somebody who has not experienced it can only imagine. What distinguishes people waiting for heart by-pass and open heart surgery is that these conditions are not alone life-threatening but people waiting for this procedure have died. This is a matter of life and death. The longer somebody is left without an operation the more difficult the ultimate operation becomes. Meanwhile the quality of life of each person on a waiting list is considerably impaired. They cannot work and they are subject to collapse. One housewife whom I know cannot vacuum clean her floor or change the bed clothes, but the Minister, and the Department will not accept this.
I spoke with a general practitioner today about the problem. He has to be quite blunt with his patients. He tells them that unless they are in the VHI and can afford to go to the Blackrock Clinic they must go out and raise £10,000 to £12,000 by way of loans or guarantees from relatives or friends. Local dances, raffles and so on are being vigorously promoted by local communities in order to enable a young man in his thirties with a young family to undergo vital and immediate open heart surgery. That young man is still paying off the loan raised by his family on his behalf and will probably do so for the rest of his life. Had he not had the operation with the consequent cost there is no doubt that he would be in his grave by now. This was a matter of life or death. There is also the human degradation of having to go, literally cap in hand, and beg the pounds from the public to rescue one. It underlines in clear detail the cold reality of the two-tier health service that exists here. It simply is not good enough.
I know I will be accused of begrudgery, but the spending of £17 million pounds on the refurbishment of Government buildings and the Taoiseach's Department was immoral in the extreme in the context of the total disarray in our health services. One can equate it as one will, one can justify it as one might, or one can defend it and make comparisons but, at the end of the day, it represents 2,000 vital heart operations at the Blackrock Clinic.
I urge the Minister to take on board the Fine Gael suggestion, to go to the lottery fund and for one year only take out of it the much needed finance to eliminate health queues once and for all.
