Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 7 Dec 2000

Vol. 527 No. 5

Ceisteanna–Questions. Priority Questions. - Hospital Waiting Lists.

Liz McManus

Question:

2 Ms McManus asked the Minister for Health and Children if his attention has been drawn to the case recently highlighted by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul regarding an elderly woman, living alone with gangrene in both feet, who was told she would have to wait five weeks for a hospital bed; if his attention has further been drawn to the fact that when the society offered to pay for a private bed she was admitted; if he considers this situation to be fair and satisfactory; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29061/00]

Minister for Health and Children (Mr. Martin)

I am deeply disturbed about the account I have heard about this case and I intend to establish all the facts relating to it. My Department has made inquiries of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and has been advised that this incident occurred in a Dublin hospital in August 1999. By late last evening the society was able to furnish further information to my Department while preserving the confidentiality of the patient concerned. This information was immediately passed to the Eastern Regional Health Authority and I have asked the regional chief executive officer to inquire into the matter at the hospital concerned and to prepare a full report for me as a matter of urgency.

I do not, therefore, intend to comment further on the case at this point. However, this case highlights the need to examine questioningly the arrangement regarding access to needed health care for those who are depending on their entitlements under the public system. In the preparation for the new strategy for health, my Department will consider all relevant issues, including the need for change in the present eligibility framework and in the arrangements regarding access to beds in public hospitals.

I will revert to the Deputy on the case when I receive the report which I have requested.

Ms McManus

Will the Minister not accept that the facts are clear? An elderly patient, in her 70s, who was suffering from gangrene in both feet and was being cared for mainly by members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, was waiting without success to get access to a hospital. Her GP was also frustrated in trying to ensure that she received the hospital care she needed. It was only when the Society of St. Vincent de Paul offered to pay for a private bed that this elderly woman was able to get access to hospital. Those are the facts and the Minister must accept that. There is no need to prolong judgment on the case although I look forward to receiving the further information promised by the Minister.

Would he not accept that this is another graphic example of the inequality running through the hospital care system that prevents public patients accessing vital treatment while private patients can access it without difficulty? This Government has been in power for three years and has had control of unprecedented financial resources yet the Minister with responsibility for health states that he is now starting out and recognising that there is a problem with inequality. As we say in our document, it is a system based on apartheid.

Does the Minister not accept that this example of an elderly patient being denied care, as a result of which the Society of St. Vincent de Paul had to offer to pay privately for that care, is not unique? The society on occasion has to pay privately for scans, for example, to give its clients access to the hospital facilities to which they have an entitlement. The Minister must try harder than simply informing the House that at some future date, in never-never land, this Government will address the core fundamental inequity at the heart of our hospital system.

It has been required action by this Government from the day it took office and no action has been delivered. The Minister does not seem to know how to deal with the problem, he is throwing money at it but it is making no difference. The waiting lists have not been reduced significantly and this poor elderly person, unfortunately, is probably not unique in terms of the experience that has been the lot of public patients and will continue to be as long as this Government procrastinates and proves itself incapable of meeting a task.

Mr. Martin

I reject the assertions made by the Deputy in the first instance because, going back 30 or 40 years, we have had a public and private sector system within our health provision. Parties in this House have been in Government over the past 30 years at intervening periods. The Deputy's party, the Labour Party was in charge of the health portfolio throughout the middle of the '90s.

Ms McManus

Things were not as bad as this.

Mr. Martin

Yet no fundamental change in that two-tier system was effected and that is the bottom line. Likewise, in the documents that have been presented the "i's" have not been dotted and the "t's" have not been crossed either in terms of costings, timeframes, eligibility—

Ms McManus

He is the Minister for Health.

Mr. Martin

I did not interrupt the Deputy when she was speaking. I just want to make a point. We have been making the required investment in the public health sector to bring up the capacity to enable people to be treated because if one does not do that, it is mere rhetoric. It is very easy to produce fancy political policy documents but the bottom line is that there has to be funding.

Ms McManus

The Minister's problem is that he does not have a policy.

Mr. Martin

We have dramatically increased the funding. We are preparing and it is a sensible thing to do. We had a health strategy in 1994 which was a good starting point although it did not really deal with the issue of eligibility. We will prepare a very comprehensive health strategy which will map out not just the ideal of achieving something over another six years—

(Interruptions.)

An Ceann Comhairle

I advise the Deputy these are Priority Questions.

Mr. Martin

—but the actual route to achieving that. In relation to this specific case, it is very important that we ascertain all the facts. There is now a suggestion that this particular incident could date back to August 1998. We are inquiring of the hospital concerned to try to check this.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Martin

We have double checked that and there are varying accounts now. We cannot be too definite about the occurrence but the Deputy is correct in saying that it highlights, as I said in my original reply, the issue of eligibility and access. However, even if it does, it should not have happened in this case, irrespective of the context of the system.