I believe the Government is deceiving the public about what is actually happening in the health service. While it claims it is trying to recruit people to the health service to fill the staff shortages to address the ever-growing waiting lists, which have now reached nearly 1 million people in various hospitals, or the 10,000 children waiting for assessments of need, the 110,000 children waiting for therapies or the hundreds of people waiting for hours on trolleys in emergency departments, in actuality it is imposing a recruitment embargo by another name. I refer to the pay and numbers strategy, which is restricting the ability of hospitals and the health services to recruit the people they need. The Government is gaslighting the public about the truth of this.

Come on.

It absolutely is.

I was talking to radiation therapists who will be in here later today. They say that despite capital investment in, for example, linear accelerators and scanners in Cork, Galway and St. Luke's, the machines are sitting idle because they do not have enough staff, and that if people leave, there is no guarantee at all that they will be replaced and there is no effort to recruit the people who are necessary. In respect of my own hospital, I was informed, and I have to hand figures from the HSE that show, that it has 21 fewer staff than are required. After we had a protest and a meeting, I got a letter saying it was going to try to recruit the 21 staff. That was a month ago, and two jobs have been advertised for St. Michael's Hospital.

The same picture appears everywhere else. Lourdes hospital in Kilkenny has only 75% of its posts filled. Twenty-seven jobs are needed and one has been advertised for. The Government is not trying to recruit the people. That is what is actually happening. It has suppressed jobs and created an artificial ceiling or quota for staff, based on whoever happened to be in post in December 2023 - completely arbitrary - if those posts were not filled. According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, 2,000 nursing posts have been suppressed.

It is very simple for me. Do I believe the Government or the INMO nurses who are balloting for industrial action? Do I believe the health workers who are protesting outside University Hospital Kerry at the moment? Do I believe hospital consultants who are saying the waiting lists are getting longer and will be longer this year than they were last year?

They are not.

I believe the health workers. I do not believe the Government. The workers are saying that they are stressed and overworked, that staffing levels are not safe, that patient safety is being endangered and that they are utterly demoralised. The Taoiseach should tell the truth about what is happening in the health service and scrap the pay and numbers strategy.

We will not scrap the pay and numbers strategy because that is how you run the country. You run Government Departments and public services by providing a budget that is voted through this House. That budget then translates into a number of positions in any public service agency and then the agency or the Minister responsible ensures those positions are filled. If it is the position of the Deputy that there should not be any budget at all linked to employment, that is radical but maybe-----

We are getting nearer to the truth now.

Excuse me, sorry.

They are out to save safe staffing.

Please, will you let the Taoiseach answer?

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. We do not need to use language in this House about "deceiving" and "gaslighting". I have facts, which I have outlined. The Deputy can tell me-----

The Deputy can wave his sheet of paper, but-----

I have my facts from the HSE.

The Deputy will get another chance in a minute, so it would be appreciated if he could give me a little opportunity to respond. Does he accept that 9,375 additional nurses and midwives are now working in the health service compared with 2020, that there are 4,092 health and social care professionals additional to 2020 or that there are an additional 3,330 doctors and dentists? Those are facts I am putting on the record of the House. They are not numbers. They are real people who get up out of bed every day and go to work in our hospitals and health service. They work damn hard and make good progress for our patients. That is the first thing.

There is a real issue, which I have acknowledged clearly and the Deputy is right to highlight, when it comes to radiation therapy. I have had a number of meetings specifically about this, including with the Irish Cancer Society. There are radiation therapist vacancies in radiation oncology centres. There are vacant posts and they are still available to be recruited. They are funded. Measures have been taken to address international recruitment of radiation therapists, including a recent change to CORU's requirements for practice hours to bring Ireland into line with international practice. Additional training places were introduced for radiation therapists during the past academic year. There are plans to further expand courses in Trinity College Dublin and UCC to meet expected future demand. Funding for advanced practice posts for radiation therapists was recently announced in budget 2025. I accept fully that there are real challenges when it comes to radiation therapy. The Deputy's point about equipment that is there and could be further utilised if we filled these posts is true. That is something the Minister for Health and the Government are working on and I have outlined what we are trying to do in respect of that.

When it comes to waiting lists, though, the Deputy is not acknowledging facts about them either. Countries across Europe are reporting increased pressure on waiting lists. In England, waiting lists had climbed to 7.6 million by June 2024. That means inpatient day case hospital waiting lists have climbed by 80% in England since the start of the pandemic. In Northern Ireland, on a per capita basis the figure is effectively double the comparable figure for Ireland. In Scotland, waiting lists have increased by 96%. Here in Ireland, waiting lists have now fallen for two years in a row, as have waiting times. That is what doctors will tell the Deputy. They will also tell him they are too high, and we agree with that and we want to continue to make progress on that.

If the Deputy wants to talk about truth, he has to have an honest debate. Waiting times are falling. Staff numbers are increasing. Budgets are increasing. More people are working in the public health service than ever before and we want to continue that journey, but this idea that we are not hiring anyone does not stand up to scrutiny.

Of course the numbers are growing. Our population is growing and the need is growing. Baffling people with figures that are out of context does not tell the real truth. Waiting lists are not falling, according to the hospital consultants the Taoiseach mentioned. They are saying they are going to increase by 11% this year, so we will have 746,000 people waiting for outpatient appointments and just under 1 million waiting for hospital appointments. I suppose the Taoiseach thinks the waiting lists for assessments of need or for therapies are not facts either, does he? They are facts and we have evidence all over the place of them.

On the understaffing of our hospitals, as I mentioned, I got the figures. In the Ireland East Hospital Group, the figure is -12 for Wexford General Hospital; -21 for St. Michael's Hospital, -4 for Loughlinstown hospital; and -27 for Lourdes hospital. We can go on through the list. The figures are -41 in south Tipperary hospital and -57 in St. Luke's in Kilkenny. In all of those cases, the jobs are not being advertised, or only a fraction of the number that even the HSE acknowledges are needed are being advertised because there is a de facto embargo. That is what the pay and numbers strategy is. The Taoiseach admitted the truth when he mentioned budgets. The Government is setting staff ceilings even when we need staff in vital areas to address the needs.

I am kind of baffled by the fact the Deputy thinks it is breaking news - hold the front page - that organisations are given a budget and can employ people within that budget. The budget we have given for the health service allows it to hire 7,500 more people between the end of this year and the end of next year. Last year saw the highest number of staff ever recruited in the history of the HSE. It seems that when I quote facts, I am bamboozling people or spinning, but when the Deputy quotes them, they are absolute gospel. Let us actually have an informed debate here-----

I got the figures from the Government. I got them from the Taoiseach's Minister for Health.

Please, Deputy, will you stop interrupting?

The faux outrage must be utterly exhausting. In St. Michael's Hospital, the Deputy's hospital, as he calls it-----

The Taoiseach called it that.

In the hospital in the Deputy's constituency, there has been a 5% increase in staffing levels since this Government came to office. That is the truth. More people are working in that hospital. Despite the Deputy's constant talking-down of the Government's recruitment efforts-----

It is understaffed.

-----more people are working in that hospital.

When it comes to safe staffing, which is the agreed staffing structure we have for safe nursing levels in the Irish health service, every single post in the safe staffing structure is now funded. Of the 2,000 posts, 1,500 are filled; 500 are fully funded. These are the facts.