I seek an explanation of the dramatic reduction in hospital services across the board in the Dublin metropolitan area, particularly in the Mater hospital in the Taoiseach's constituency. All we seem to get from the Government is the suggestion that the Minister for Finance is imposing the hatchet, which bewilders the Minister for Health and Children, who is critical of the Minister for Finance. They have had a public spat in the media which the Taoiseach denied. The Taoiseach himself seems helpless when it comes to a hospital in his area, though that is the hospital which employed him when he was a civilian, so to speak.
If there are 120 bed closures, which is over 20% of the Mater's total capacity, one cannot but have a massive reduction in services and staff as well as the ability to bring in patients, from long-term patients on waiting lists to accident and emergency patients. All those services have been affected in the Mater and in other Dublin hospitals. That will lead to demoralisation in the services; such a traumatic effect on a hospital's ability to provide the service it is used to providing means it is hard to get back to a situation where there is proper trust and credibility, not to mention morale. That is the danger of the present situation. A month ago an accident and emergency case was treated in the car park of the Mater; we cannot go on with that situation.
I am dealing with the case of a double amputee at present who has been in the Mater for nine months and has nowhere to go. The local authority has no interest in providing any essential repairs and the Mater, in the best interests of the hospital, can see the patient has no future if released. That is the kind of hard choices the hospital is finding very difficult, as are hospitals all over the country. There are no proper community services nor is there proper integration of health and accommodation services, particularly when specific adjustments must be made to homes and the local authority cannot act due to the cutbacks.
The Government took office on a promise of eliminating the hospital waiting lists within two years. That now sounds like a sick joke, as the waiting lists will probably double in size within two years. Why has there been such a dramatic reduction in services? Why has the situation become so drastic in the Mater, the oldest hospital on Dublin's northside?