Who is misleading the public? Who was it told the public two years ago, on 6 May 2002, that he would abolish public queues for hospitals? Who spoke on the radio this morning on behalf of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Irish Medical Organisation to say that implementation of the Working Time Directive will adversely affect patient care, inevitably lengthen the queues and slow down appointments for elective treatments?

Who is fooling whom? Is it not the reality that there are new units of hospitals to the value of €416 million, as identified in the Minister's memorandum to Government, boarded up because they cannot be commissioned? Only this morning a newspaper reports a €30 million unit in St. James's Hospital, that would treat 20,000 cancer patients a year, is chained and padlocked. Cancer patients await access to Dublin's largest hospital which is padlocked and chained a year after the unit was provided.

Deputy Kenny has given the Taoiseach the list of hospitals we visited in Mullingar, Clonmel, Naas, the University Hospital in Cork, Wexford, James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown and several others. Who is the Minister responsible for health? Clearly he is the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, who brought in six-monthly returns last week showing a surplus in tax of €1,049 million and an underspend on the budget provision of €609 million. Essential moneys to commission hospitals for patients awaiting treatment for cancer cannot be provided and the Taoiseach says Deputy Kenny is misleading the House and the public. Has the Taoiseach lost all touch with reality? Does he see the embarrassment of his own backbenchers? When will he do something about the chronic state of the health services?

This year the health Estimates are up by over 10% and the capital programme for health is approximately €1 million extra. Every one of the units to which the Deputy refers was built by this Government in recent years and in the next few years every one of these units——

They were not.

The buildings are padlocked.

On a point of order, they were sanctioned by Deputy Noonan. The Government has failed to open them. The Taoiseach is misleading the House.

No unit in the State, built by this Government, is closed. We are spending more on capital programmes and opening more units; we have more staff, more treatments, better services and will continue to provide that. The Deputy persists with the idea that these units were always there and are closed.

The Government has failed to open them. The Taoiseach is misleading the people.

They are new units, newly staffed, with 30,000 extra people working in the health service. We will continue to open all those units.

They are empty.

They are closed.

We have improved the cancer service beyond all doubt.

People are queueing.

Deputy Kenny's party launched a small cancer programme some years ago. Deputy Rabbitte's party did nothing for it. We have put in significant funding, good units, good services and we are going to continue that. Those are the facts.

What a joke.

What about the cancer unit in Cavan hospital?

This is a Labour Party question. Deputy Rabbitte is entitled to ask his supplementary question without interruption.

The Taoiseach seems to have learnt nothing from his recent encounter with the people. The Irish Medical Organisation said this morning that implementation of the Working Time Directive would lead to a situation that was unsafe, unworkable and, in some cases, reckless. That directive must be implemented by 1 August. There are 700 nurse vacancies.

The Taoiseach talks of people blocking beds but there is bed capacity in private nursing homes that cannot be accessed because of their cost. He boasts about his friends in the construction industry building units and new wings of hospitals and says that his Government did all this. His Government has kept them closed.

His Minister brought a memo to Cabinet that someone contrived to leak into the public domain showing that €416 million worth of plant is lying idle that cannot be commissioned. Meanwhile his Minister for Finance boasts of how he intends to stay in that Department, no matter what the Taoiseach intends, and he will not provide the basic money for people in need of appointments in our public hospital system. It is a disgrace and it is appropriate that this is the final theme in this House before it rises for the summer recess.

I do not wish to enter an industrial dispute on the Working Time Directive with people who spoke on the radio this morning. However, I ask that they quickly engage with the Minister for Health and Children. It is not reasonable for any wing of the hospital service to suggest we can run our hospitals between 9 o'clock and 5 o'clock from Monday to Friday.

Nobody is suggesting that.

I am sorry to say people are.

No, they are not.

They are.

The Deputy is not so well informed.

The IMO will not agree on the meaning of working time and it insists that all the non-consultant hospital doctors working between 9 o'clock and 5 o'clock from Monday to Friday will not propose a working time complaint officer or agree to local implementation groups. That is their position.

No. They said clinical training could not take place in those hours.

They and we know that is not workable. If they engage with the Minister for Health and Children we can resolve this so that from 1 August it will apply to doctors in training. They have long campaigned on the basis they were working too long. We supported that campaign and made significant improvements from the 80 or 90 hours a week they were forced to work. The Working Time Directive requires that doctors work no more than an average of 58 hours in hospital each week, and no more than 13 hours per day and receive daily and weekly rest breaks. We support that. To make it operate effectively, however, there will be an enormous cost to the State, which it is willing to pay. Negotiations must be concluded on how the rosters will work.

As regards the other issues, I will say no more than I have already said. The Government has built the units, it will open those units and it will continue to build the further units listed in a capital programme, under which funding of €36 billion will be provided in the coming years.