The crisis in the health service is breaking daily records, with previously unheard of cases of human misery being experienced across the country. We have seen older people being left on trolleys for days on end and families nervous about taking their loved ones to emergency departments because of the delays. We have seen elective surgeries being cancelled. On Tuesday, Deputy Micheál Martin expressed concern, in particular, about children's elective surgeries being cancelled, the incidence of which was confirmed this morning by a leading professional involved in one of the main hospitals. There are 117,000 children on inpatient and outpatient waiting lists. On Tuesday night, the fire service had to be called to University Hospital Limerick to inspect the conditions in its emergency department, a building recently built and opened under the Government's watch. Patients had to be removed on the instructions of fire service staff.

There has been huge coverage in this House and outside it of all the issues in the health service. We debated the issues only two weeks so. However, I always get the sense that there is no understanding on the other side of the House of their impact. There is no real interest in what is happening and the Government is just going through the motions of defending it. That was confirmed to me when I read the transcript of yesterday's meeting of the Joint Committee on Health, where one of the Tánaiste's colleagues spoke about her shock at the conditions in the health service. She could not understand why children with head injuries, broken arms and broken legs had to wait in the same room as children who were vomiting. She said conditions and waiting times were unacceptable and she hoped nobody would recognise her as a politician. All of her stress has been experienced by thousands of parents and thousands of children of elderly parents, yet it is only now that the penny seems to be dropping. Apparently as a consequence of this Government Deputy's testimony, there will be a special meeting of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party to discuss the matter. The horse has bolted and the Government is panicked.

Does the Tánaiste accept that the winter plan trumpeted by the Government two weeks ago as the answer, even though there are no new staff and no new beds, is failing in the context of what is unfolding in emergency rooms and in children's emergency departments across the island? Does the Tánaiste share his colleague's assessment of the health service? Is he embarrassed to be a Minister and Tánaiste in this Government?

"No" is the straight answer to the Deputy's last question. Like everybody else in government, I appreciate the pressures the health service is under and the pressures that are sometimes imposed on parents and families. There are a lot of good things happening in healthcare but there are also real pressure points. Deputy O'Connell, as a mother and a Government Deputy, was expressing a frustration and a recognition of the need for significant investment in children's healthcare. Effectively, they reaffirm the need for a new children's hospital and continued investment in hospital care for children. It is not acceptable that a parent taking a child into a hospital emergency department, particularly when seeking specialist paediatric care, should have to wait for long periods of time. That is not acceptable to me, to the Government or to the Minister for Health. That is why we are changing how we provide hospital care and emergency care for children by making a massive capital investment in a new children's hospital, with satellite facilities in different parts of Dublin and elsewhere, including the large paediatric unit that was announced for Cork University Hospital in the past number of months.

The truth is that at this time of the year there are added pressures that have resulted in waiting times being longer than they should be in emergency departments, primarily because of flu, the vomiting bug and respiratory virus issues. In response, Children's Health Ireland, CHI, has restricted all elective and routine inpatient procedures in the coming weeks. The Health Service Executive, HSE, has issued an apology to all families whose children have had their procedure postponed at short notice. Every effort is being made to improve the situation and appointments will be rescheduled at the earliest possible opportunity. Influenza hospitalisations are increasing, as they always do at this time of year. The best prevention measure for parents is to ensure their children get the flu vaccine, which will help to reduce pressure on the system. I encourage parents, in particular, to think about that and to act on it to ensure we reduce pressure on the system.

Children's hospitals' emergency departments remain open, although patients attending have experienced some delays. CHI operates cross-city bed management for admissions to its three emergency departments in Dublin and the urgent care centre at Connolly Hospital, which is now up and running and will have a capacity to deal with 25,000 children over a 12-month period. Things are happening and this is a priority for Government. We know exactly the pressures on hospitals, both for staff and, more importantly, for patients. We are responding to that from both a policy perspective and an investment perspective.

The Tánaiste says that things are happening. What is happening is that the fire service is being called into emergency departments around the country. The Tánaiste and the Taoiseach trumpeted the new children's urgent care unit at Blanchardstown hospital. However, that was supposed to be open Monday to Sunday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. but it is only opening Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. because it cannot be staffed. It has not been staffed properly because the mess the Government has presided over in regard to the national children's hospital project is impacting on staffing budgets across the health service. There are 117,000 children on inpatient and outpatient waiting lists and postponing elective surgery will add to those lists. Nothing is being done about the consultant contracts to address consultant vacancies. The Government is presiding over nursing vacancies. If those positions were filled, the waiting lists would be addressed more quickly and people would not be left waiting. There are 13 beds in Temple Street hospital's emergency department. Yesterday, 12 of those beds were taken by admitted patients because there was no space for them elsewhere in the hospital.

That is the reality to which the Tánaiste seemed blind and oblivious until one of his colleagues suddenly woke him up. Now he is professing concern. Concern is not good enough for somebody who is waiting three days for a bed. Concern is not good enough for somebody whose child is so sick that they have to leave the emergency department after waiting nine hours and still not getting treatment. That is good enough. The winter plan which the Government has championed is failing in its first two weeks. What will happen during the rest of the winter?

The Deputy's fake outrage is a bit much.

It is not fake.

I take questions in this House every Thursday and almost every week, understandably, healthcare issues are raised.

The Tánaiste does nothing about them week after week.

Deputies opposite stand up each week and try to spin the message that the Government does not care about or know what is going on, which is nonsense.

The Tánaiste's colleague is saying the same thing.

A Deputy who is also a mother was understandably frustrated. The Government understands-----

The Government is making the investment decisions that are leading to these problems.

If Members want to chat among themselves, they should do so outside the Chamber. The Tánaiste without interruption, please.

We are investing €17 billion in the healthcare system next year, which is significantly more than was ever before allocated. We are prioritising how that is spent, depending on the pressures that emerge from week to week and month to month. We have committed additional funding of €26 million to the winter initiative, the purpose of which is to ensure that throughput in hospitals is as efficient as it can be through the pressure months of the winter. It is about providing step-down facilities, adding extra beds and staffing to the system and keeping people out of hospital as much as possible through the winter months where we are now starting to see pressure.

That goes for children as well as adults. We will continue to prioritise their healthcare with the resources available to do so. If the Deputy looks at the bigger picture, which some people in this House do not, although I accept this is because they want to solve problems, 27,000 patients who were in hospital last May had the opportunity to have their say on how they rated the health service in a national inpatient survey. Some 84% of those who took part rated their stay in hospital as either good or very good. There are good things happening in healthcare in Ireland. We have incredibly dedicated staff who are looking after people well but real pressure points remain and we will prioritise our response accordingly.