Matt Shanahan presses the Taoiseach on 24-7 cardiac care pledge

As a historian, I suspect long before you became the Taoiseach, our Taoiseach, you must have thought about what your enduring legacy might be. I used to think that the oft-quoted Fianna Fáil reflection on government as senior hurling was about political competition, the training and effort taken, the resilience and gumption required, and the skill of our national sport. Not that our cabinet tugs out in their individual county jerseys. The mean, spirited question I have to ask of you today, Taoiseach, and I apologise in advance, is are you a Cork Taoiseach? Are you a Taoiseach who just happens to be from Cork? I ask this grim but important question because we are now halfway into your thermos, Taoiseach, and in that time we have seen two budgets and a revised national development plan. I'd remind you of a pre-election promise you made to the people of the South East in 2016. You promised to provide 24-7 cardiac care to the South East region. You stood in a picture of the grounds of University Hospital Waterford, with your candidate, with all your Fianna Fáil councillors in 2016, and you committed to delivering 24-7. That picture was at the centre of your 2016 campaign. It was the photo that restored a seat to your party in Waterford. You did not stand and promise another study, not another review, not another investigation. No, you deliberately stood in the grounds of UHW and you committed to deliver a long-promised, life-saving service, a service available to every other region of the country except to those of us in the South East. In the preceding 2011 election campaign, Enda Kenny pledged the South East to full university. And with that promise, he took half of the seats in the South East region, 7 out of 14. But in power, he then resiled from that promise. His party, Fine Gael, now have just two of those 14 seats, while we in the region were left to pick up the massive economic and social costs of that last decade. It was heartbreaking when we see Grange Gormans spring into life. At this point in time, Taoiseach, your legacy in the South East is from your time as Minister for Education, when under pressure from Cork, you undid the Institute of Technology upgrade in 1997. In the South East region and in Waterford, Enda Kenny's legacy is entirely framed in his unkept promise, his broken word. My question to you, Taoiseach, is a simple question. Will there be a 24-7 cardiac care service, a service available to every other region in Ireland, in the South East, before you leave the Taoiseach's office? Will you be keeping your promise, Taoiseach? Well, when I was a history student, the first thing I was told that one should always endeavour to be objective, in terms of one's historical narrative, and to try and see all sides of the story and of the equation, and not through the prism of one's own narrow sort of perspective, maybe, or partisan view of things. I would like to think, I recall back at the time when I was Minister for Education, many of the institutes of technology or then regional technical colleges were looking for status upgrades and so on, and I recall looking at the plant, the actual buildings, and saying, do you not think it would be better if we invested substantially in the capacity of the colleges? And my legacy, actually, to Waterford was buying that additional land, which has guaranteed, since the late 90s, the very significant expansion of Waterford Institute of Technology, to such an extent that, under international peer review, it can compete to be a university, and will become a technological university. And that's the way universities should become universities. Not actually at the whim of politicians, arriving at some platform and announcing, I'm going to make you into a university, with no regard to capacity, or no regard to a whole range of investments that should happen in advance. Now, that's the approach I took as a Minister for Education. And we did set up, we had a binary system where we set up a peer review, we provided for technological universities to happen, and successive ministers have progressed that idea of developing institutes into technological universities, and doing so in a fair way, that has credibility internationally. And that, when it has credibility internationally, the region benefits, in terms of more investment. And we know that the technology university in Waterford has really advanced over the last decade or two, and has developed significant specialties, not least in the area of enterprise and industry, and so forth. And quite a number of foreign direct investments have occurred as a result of that. And I would say, Deputy, the time has come to talk up Waterford, to talk up the third-level institution in Waterford, because it has a lot to commend itself. That's what I would do. I have great belief in that institute, and I believe it's going to, along with Carola, become a technological university. And that's great for the region. And we are committed to doing that, and we are committed to the consequential investments that will be required. And Minister Harris is, in his capacity, as Minister for Higher Education and Research. And with respect of the hospital, I know you know your colleague, Minister Mary Butler, has been tenacious, determined, alongside you and others in the constituency, to advance the situation in terms of the cat lab and in terms of cardiac cover. And the Programme for Government commits to the delivery of a second cat lab in University Hospital Waterford. Funding has been allocated. The contractor for the construction of the new cat lab was formally appointed in March. The project commenced, as you know, in May of this year, and with a work programme of about 13 months. And the equipping and the staffing is provided for, and will happen. Well, Taoiseach, you spectacularly failed to answer the question that I actually asked of you. And what I take from that, basically, is that your hard answer is a no. And that you will leave office in December, in 14 months now, without that promise kept to the people of the South East. And promises are being kept elsewhere in the Programme for Government, despite the incredible challenges of COVID. But if your promise cannot be kept on 24-7 for the South East, well, then I think, frankly, politics is broken in this country. There are huge swathes of the country that feel unrepresented by the present Cork Dublin cabinet, to be fair. Reasonable and necessary things, life-saving things, like 24-7 cardiac care in the South East, are not being delivered. And they cannot get done. So you are just halfway, Taoiseach, into your term at this stage. I believe you have time, if you decide, to take action. I think your legacy, and possibly that of your party in the South East, will be the promises that you made to stoke up political support on the cardiac issue, and whether you are a man of your words to deliver on them. We are going to dramatically expand the cardiac provision. You know that, and it is provided for. And it has taken... We are 24-7, Taoiseach. Sorry. We need to get the second CAT lab built. We need to get it staffed. And you know how to... That is how you progress it. And that is how you get to your 24. So you have to progress it. You know that at this stage, through all the deliberations that we have been through, and in terms of, you know, the University Hospital of Waterford, they are commencing the recruitment of the required staff right now for the second catheterisation lab in the coming months. That is a massive improvement. And you know the arrangement in terms of interventional cardiology, diagnostic elective procedures between UHW and UPMC in Waterford and the service level agreement that has been arrived at. And you also know that in terms of the North Quayles, the largest ever investment by a government in Waterford was announced. And committed to it. No, but sorry. Deputy, please. But you are talking about and creating a narrative of sort of partisan investment in different parts of the country. This huge investment committed and announced and allocated to Waterford in terms of the physical infrastructure, the North Quays, in terms of the hospital, there is investment, and in terms of the new technological university as well, which I think would be very beneficial to the region. Thank you, Tisha. Go to market. Thank you, Tisha.