The record of Minister for Health Mary Harney was criticised in a Labour Private Members' motion.
The party's health spokeswoman Liz McManus accused Ms Harney of presiding over a deterioration in the service. "By now, her promises have acquired the same hollow ring that those of Minister [Michéal] Martin had," she added. Ms Harney will contribute to the debate tonight.
Ms McManus said that a year ago Ms Harney had said that people would judge the health services by accident and emergency, declaring that long waiting times were not acceptable to her or the Government.
"Brave words, but words that have turned out to be absolutely worthless. Despite Minister Harney's promises, the accident and emergency crisis has actually got worse," said Ms McManus.
"We know from figures released by the HSE that the average number of people waiting for admission to the Mater hospital in Dublin for more than six hours has risen by an extraordinary 70 per cent between September 4th and June 5th. The long waiting times in A&E have, in reality, got significantly worse since Minister Harney took over."
She added that the waiting times were longer, and the number of people waiting was greater. On November 18th last year, on the day Ms Harney had announced her 10-point plan to address the crisis in A&E, 163 patients were waiting on trolleys. Almost a year later, on October 11th, the numbers had reached a staggering 321.
She said that the number of acute hospital beds per head of population, far from increasing during the Government's lifetime, had actually decreased over the last five years.
