Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

More than 11,000 patients waited on hospital trolleys last month. University Hospital Limerick again had the highest figure of any hospital in the State, closely followed by University Hospital Galway. The trolley crisis is now a year-round emergency. Our hospitals are under enormous and sustained pressure. Yesterday the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, announced that a HSE support team is to be deployed to University Hospital Limerick. This hospital is in a state of constant crisis, with an emergency department pushed to the brink every single day. A HSE support team is welcome but it is a drop in the ocean when it comes to what University Hospital Limerick needs. It will not alter the hospital’s needs.

The hospital needs 288 extra beds. It needs to hire 200 vital staff, including 20 emergency Department nurses, and it needs the Government to lift the recruitment embargo immediately. This embargo is very dangerous. The system is at breaking point, yet the Government, with its eyes wide open, is choosing to block the hiring of healthcare staff. By imposing and maintaining this embargo, it has chosen to make a bad situation worse. The consequences of the embargo are felt right across the health system. It has consequences for stroke victims. The head of the national stroke programme, Professor Rónán Collins, has said the service is no longer able to adequately staff stroke units, that one in three stroke victims does not get a stroke unit bed and that stroke patients are getting less than half of the recommended therapy time. It has consequences for those in need of mental health care. The Government keeps the embargo in place and the psychiatric care system now has 700 vacancies. Peter Hughes, the general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association, has said the recruitment embargo is seriously impacting the delivery of services, especially services for children and adolescents.

It does not stop there. Radiographers and radiotherapists cannot be hired to deliver the national cancer strategy. The HSE, as the Taoiseach knows, has sought an additional €20 million to deliver the strategy this year. How much did the Government give it? It gave zero. Public dentists cannot be hired, which means 100,000 children are not getting the dental treatment they need. Multidisciplinary teams needed to treat patients at home, in nursing homes and in community care settings cannot be hired. The service is understaffed and under great pressure. I could go on and on. The Government's recruitment embargo is layering crisis upon crisis. While it refuses to directly employ the healthcare professionals our system needs, it is spending a fortune on hiring agency staff. Government spending in this area has more than doubled, to €650 million. You could not make this up. Under the Government, young doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals are being educated and trained to emigrate. The message sent to those who have already left is not to come back, even though we need them now more than ever.

A Thaoisigh, tá an cosc atá agat ar earcaíocht sa tseirbhís sláinte contúirteach, agus tá impleachtaí thromchúiseacha aige d’othair. Caithfidh tú fáil réidh leis go beo. I have outlined for the Taoiseach the very real consequences of his recruitment embargo. It was wrong to impose it in the first place. To keep it in place is now counter-productive, damaging and dangerous, so I ask him to scrap it immediately and allow our health services to hire the staff they so desperately need.

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