Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Mr. O'Brien and his officials to the meeting. The first thing we need to establish and accept is that accident and emergency overcrowding is unacceptable in any circumstance. That is only the beginning. Having accepted that, we must take action to solve the problem permanently. What we have been doing for years, what we have done in the past week and what we are doing again today is largely short-termism and firefighting. There are little or no examples of addressing the situation on a long-term basis to solve the problem permanently.

In his presentation, Mr. O'Brien indicated the difficulty with reduced budgets over recent years. Of course, he is absolutely correct. Nearly €4 billion has been taken out of the budget, 11,000 staff have been lost, 2,000 beds have been taken out of the system, funding for home help hours has been reduced by about €2 million, and fair deal has been reduced by about 50%. All those cuts introduced by this Government and previous Governments have devastated the system. This is what has happened. Staff at all levels are working daily above and beyond the call of duty. There is no capacity left in the system. South Tipperary General Hospital, which is my local hospital, is running at about 120% capacity every day. This is the case for other hospitals throughout the country. The system is under ferocious pressure and there is little or no capacity left to deal with any surges or additional pressures.

The Minister said today and on a number of occasions that this is a long-standing problem and it has been a long-standing, chronic problem for years. It has been addressed on numerous occasions by reports and investigations. At one stage it was declared a national emergency. The outcome is that we know the solution to this problem. Every manager in every hospital throughout the country, every clinician and every nurse knows the solution to the problem. We simply must address it on a long-term, permanent basis to ensure that accident and emergency overcrowding, which is absolutely horrific for patients and members of their families, is solved once and for all.

We know exactly what needs to be done. Measures like the use of medical assessment units, discharge allowances and the use of rapid access to outpatient department appointments are in place in most hospitals. They are very worthwhile and essential and are very helpful but they will not solve the problem on their own. We need other actions that have been in existence for years and that we have known for years will solve the problem. We need community intervention teams. I note that there is money in the budget and there is a proposal to extend those, but it will not be done for all hospitals. We need them for every area with an emergency department. We need closed beds to be opened and additional step-down beds for patients. We need to restore fair deal to at least the situation we were in this time 12 months ago when it was at six weeks. We need additional nursing, medical and support staff to deal with the problems we have. Unless those measures are put in place, we will be dealing with this question next year, the year after and the year after that.

Could Mr. O'Brien give us some more information on the final paragraph on page eight of his presentation? It suggests that there are 2,500 long-stay public beds at risk in the coming 12 months in respect of standards. I would like some confirmation that this matter will be dealt with, funding will be made available for it and they will continue to remain in place.