Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I have a few questions. The first concerns University Hospital Galway and the spinal unit there. I will read the witnesses a line of correspondence from a senior consultant there: "As you know, our ability to access major elective spinal surgery in the University Hospital has virtually come to a halt due to the lack of resource allocation." What is being done to give the hospital the resources it needs in order to be able to carry out vital spinal surgeries? At the end of the list there are people who have been in excruciating pain for a number of years and are absolutely at their wits' end. If University Hospital Galway cannot do it, is there somewhere else across the Border or abroad where the surgery can be done? Can someone within the hospital system find a pathway or say, "The buck stops with me and I will find a way to take this person, or however many people, out of the excruciating pain with which they must live every day"? The National Treatment Purchase Fund is not an option because it states in the correspondence:

Regrettably, the spinal service is not in a position to give me a date or a review of surgery at this time. The man is not suitable for referral to the National Treatment Purchase Fund or referral to a private hospital due to the complex surgery needs.

We cannot just leave such people in excruciating pain and do nothing about it. Judging from what is being presented here, one would hardly think we have a system that is almost the worst in Europe. Every time we have personnel from the HSE before us, in committee and otherwise, they paint this picture that everything is happening and things will get better and better, yet we see that things are getting worse all the time. Reference was made earlier to shifting the deckchairs around on the Titanic, and that is certainly my view of the matter as well.

I really must take up the issue of nursing. I spoke to a number of nurses who live in Birmingham over the weekend and asked them why they do not come back to work within the system here. They are not a protected species and they do not need to be minded. The nurses I know certainly do not. What they want is a safe working environment. They say the Irish health system is too high-risk. They wonder what will happen if they go into a high-risk situation. They will be trying to do the work of three or four people. They wonder what will happen if they make mistakes and who will have their backs if they make mistakes and lose their licences. That is what they are trying to weigh up, rather than some of the things Ms Cowan mentioned, which may be concerns of a lesser degree. What our nurses deserve is to be provided with a safe working environment. There is a real crisis within nursing and recruitment. The nurses also say the recruitment process is just too complex and that there are too many blockages along the way. Can the HSE simplify that process? If people have the qualifications and experience to do the job, they should be put into that setting and let work in their own country because people have a right to do that.

I think Mr. Gloster said €500 million is to be spent on district hospital beds. Will he tell me how many beds this will equate to and perhaps where they will be? How many step-down beds did he say there are?