Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am a mid-west TD and a number of colleagues here are from Clare and Limerick. The situation in UHL is the worst I, or any of us, have ever seen. I want to take this out of party politics, genuinely, because I live among these people. I live over the road from this hospital even though I am in a different county. This is something I take a personal interest in every day. I have never ever seen the situation there as bad as it now. I have never seen so many people affected. I am referring to patients, their families and the staff. I have never had so many staff come to see me. The issue is simple. The reconfiguration never worked. The resources were not put into it. Let us take the politics out of the issue. The mid-west is now being discriminated against. That can be shown by a comparison of key performance indicators and resources in UHL versus - we picked this hospital randomly - Beaumont Hospital.