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CLARE TD Pat Breen (FG) has been accused of helping to rig parliamentary question time for the Minister for Health James Reilly’s (FG) – in order to flood the session with positive questions.
Deputy Breen used his allocated question, during Minister Reilly’s last questions time, to question the Minister for Health about cuts to waiting lists at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
This followed a similar question from Clare Deputy, Joe Carey (FG), about the reduction in the number of patients on trolleys at Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Ennis.
Indeed, more than half of the 170 questions submitted to last month’s health session were queries about cuts to waiting lists or MRSA infection rates submitted by Fine Gael backbenchers.
These actions were described as a “cynical abuse” of the rules of the Dáil by Clare Fianna Fail TD, Tim my Dooley.
“The Government parties are engaging in a cynical abuse of the outdated parliamentary question process to prevent opposition parties from getting to the truth of the broken promises which were made prior to the election,” said Deputy Dooley
“The five government reps in Clare, three TDs and two senators, need to face up to the litany of uturns on property tax, PRSI increas- es and child benefit cuts amongst others.”
The Minister for Health hosts a parliamentary questions and answers session every five weeks. The number of questions submitted has increased greatly in recent months with 71 submitted in September, 86 in November, 112 in February and 170 last month.
In a statement, Deputy Breen claimed that he had a perfectly valid reason for submitting the question.
“The reason why I submitted a PQ [Parliamentary Question] in rela tion to waiting lists at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, was because the Small Hospital Framework will shortly be published by the Minister for Health, which may have some affect on the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Ennis and given that hospitals in the Louth area have already undergone a reconfiguration I was interested in ascertaining the impact that this reconfiguration had on the waiting lists in Louth,” he said.