Mr. Liam Doran:

The point about the predictability of Tuesday is correct. The Tuesday spike is a factor of the lack of discharges at weekends that should have happened had people come in to make those decisions, the recommencement of clinics on Mondays that might lead to referrals and the recommencement of elective work in some houses totally detached in some cases from recognition of the fact that emergency departments have been under pressure all weekend. The spike is predictable.

Dr. O'Conor answered the question on warehousing. If we can build modular units to house the admitted patients, we can build wards to look after them properly. To be blunt, that is not done because it is cheaper to leave patients in the emergency department where the same number of nursing staff must do two jobs, namely, their normal emergency department jobs and looking after these admitted patients, trying to prepare them, awaiting their transfers upstairs, etc.

Warehousing has a clinical risk. Patients are taken out of sight and sent down dark corridors. Limerick's emergency department is an appalling disgrace. It is a walk-in wardrobe that is the major trauma unit for the mid-western health region. Its staff at all levels are heroes and its patients are victims. That has to be said long and loud. Leaving patients in sight is safer than the alternative, but it is not right or good.