We have a serious health crisis in this country, with more than 1 million people on waiting lists for medical procedures. This, coupled with housing, has to be our biggest challenge, but like housing, this and previous Governments have failed miserably to challenge the crisis with any meaningful success. I was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 2016 and it soon became apparent that we had a health crisis no one was tackling, with people going blind for the want a cataract operation; people in dire pain in need of a hip or knee operation and people of all ages suffering on waiting lists and going nowhere. The Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, launched a €350 million waiting list action plan in February of last year which committed to reducing active waiting lists by 18%, but fast-forward to the end of the year, those on waiting lists only dropped by a modest 1.6% - fewer than 11,500 people - instead of the planned 132,000 people. At that time, a staggering 887,500 people were on waiting lists. Some 97,000 of these are children. When the additional 243,000 people waiting for CT, MRI or ultrasound scans are added, it takes us way over 1 million people on waiting lists.

This weekend, three buses will leave Cork and Kerry, taking people on waiting lists, some of whom have been waiting nearly five years, for operations in Belfast under the cross-Border scheme. Many of these people are up at 3 a.m., coming from places such as Mizen Head and the Beara Peninsula. Some of these are people of more than 80 years of age. They have worked honestly and hard in this country, paid their taxes and at a time when they want a small procedure such as a cataract procedure, they are left to go blind. Two of these buses go up for cataract procedures to Kingsbridge private hospital. I thank the private hospital for working with me and others, in saving thousands of peoples' eyesight with cataract operations. However, it is not just cataracts. For the first time, we will run a full bus from Cork and Kerry to Kingsbridge, with people of all ages who need hip, knee, carpal tunnel and prostate surgeries, as well as other surgical procedures. All of them have been left in pain or with the worry that their disease will spread. This same-day, up-and-down bus service, organised by myself and Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, is the first of this type in this country. These long-suffering patients will have their consultations and pre-operative assessments, pre-ops, on Saturday and will be home that night. Each patient is travelling in the knowledge that they will now have surgery within two to three months; light at the end of a very dark tunnel for them. I asked my staff to randomly pull out a file for one of the patients going up for a hip consultation to Belfast on Saturday morning. They told me this man in west Cork has been waiting two and a half years in Cork, on one waiting list or another, and the pain has gone too far. The only solution possible is a reimbursable operation in Belfast.

The Minister, Deputy Harris, was the Minister for Health for many years and during this time, health issues got worse rather than better. I know people in west Cork who are double amputees and cannot leave hospital as they have no home help. There is no endoscopy unit in Bantry. The Minister was down there and he made the announcement, but it never happened. There is no stroke unit for Bantry hospital either. There was announcement after announcement, but it has not happened. The list of shocking failures by the HSE continues, leading Paul Cullen to state in The Irish Times that management in the HSE is "stubbornly resistant to change". Does the Minister agree with Paul Cullen's statement? Will he be honest and admit that the HSE is a complete failure, leaving exhausted HSE staff and patients in pain?

I absolutely will not. The Deputy can have a go at and slur the Government, if he wants, but when he talks about the HSE, he is talking about hundreds of thousands people working every day. The HSE is nurses, doctors, healthcare assistants and people who get up and work bloody hard to try to run our health service. Thus, I do not agree with cheap-shot political lines at all. I will agree, however, that we continue to face major challenges in healthcare. We are all aware of that. The Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, is presiding over what is the largest expansion in the Irish health service. There are very clear statistics to show this. If one looks at GP access to diagnostics, 500,000 people had access in 2022. There are 20,000 more people working in the Irish health service - the people the Deputy wants to criticise. There are 6,200 more nurses; 2,000 more doctors and dentists and 3,000 more health and social care professionals. We are working on making sure we can train more people. We want to significantly expand the number of doctors, nurses and speech and language therapists we train, in order that we can really beef up our health service. We have seen the largest expansion of beds across the health service and the putting in place of primary care teams. Do we have challenges? Yes, we do, but are our health outcomes improving? Yes, they are. Are we seeing a significant reduction in waiting times, when compared with the Covid peak? We are.

Every health service in the world and every country that went through lockdowns and restrictions as a result of Covid, saw a significant increase in their waiting lists. Until Covid, we had been seeing modest improvements in waiting times, especially for inpatient and day cases. The pandemic really saw our waiting lists go through a very difficult period, but there were 135,000 fewer people waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets of ten to 12 weeks at the end of last month, than there were at the Covid peak. I absolutely accept there are challenges and there is more to do but I believe we are on the right path in having that agreed plan that is Sláintecare; having an understanding of what wait times look like and having an unprecedented level of investment in beds and staff. Now comes the tricky bit and the bit about reform, that is, the new consultant contract the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, has put in place; making sure we staff our hospitals in a way that works, especially around discharges at weekends and - I acknowledge the Deputy is passionate about this issue - how we use our level 2 and community hospitals to better effect.

The Minister said I was taking a cheap shot. I am not taking a cheap shot at anybody. I am standing for the people who are suffering in this country. I am standing for the staff who had been neglected by the Government, at the very top, and have been overstretched in their hospitals. How can the Minister stand here and praise a system that leaves a double amputee in a hospital, unable to go home because of not being able to find home help? How can he stand over the HSE which announces, year in and year out, that it will have an endoscopy and stroke unit in Bantry hospital, with no delivery? How can he stand over people travelling by car, passing Bantry General Hospital after 8 p.m. every night, because the accident and emergency department there is closed and having a to travel 120 or 130 miles to a bottleneck at Cork University Hospital? How can he stand over a mental health service that is losing beds in west Cork? How can he stand over people of more than 80 years of age travelling to Northern Ireland, getting up at 3 a.m. and not coming back until 36 hours later, to have a 25-minute procedure? The Minister stands up to tell me I am taking a cheap shot. He is taking a cheap shot at every man, woman and young person who will travel on that bus - more than 70 of them - next weekend, who are suffering in pain. They need a hip, prostate or cataract operation and the Government has failed miserably to deliver it for them.

We are also living in a country that has the highest life expectancy in Europe, as deemed by the World Health Organization. Not everything the Deputy says about the HSE is entirely true either. It must be doing something right.

What was wrong?

If the Deputy wants to blame the HSE for everything that goes wrong, he also has to acknowledge-----

The Minister is in charge.

-----when the health services progress. It is a statement of fact that the Deputy and his constituents are living in a country that has the highest life expectancy in Europe. He wants to blame the Government for everything but when something good happens, that is incidental and has nothing to do with us.

A total of 1 million people.

He cannot have it both ways. The reality of the situation is there are too many people waiting too long-----

They are only promises.

-----but it is also true to say that there were fewer people waiting last month than there were at the Covid peak. We are seeing real progress and inroads as a result of an unparalleled and unprecedented level of investment. That will continue and it will benefit the Deputy's constituents. The new ophthalmology service we will see in Cork this year will also fundamentally benefit the area.

That was last year.