Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We will see. I appreciate that Mr. Reid has agreed to visit UHL because several committee members would like to go the hospital with him in the coming days. I am not interested in dramatics but in solutions. I have written to Mr. Reid about UHL and the mid-west more generally. Deputy Harty is also from the mid-west and knows that what is going on there at the moment is catastrophic. I had to beg for a new CT scanner, which is due to be delivered on Friday, because it was so obviously needed. I have made a comparison between the resources at UHL and at Beaumont Hospital and the disparity is frightening. These are similar hospitals in similar areas. While it is true that apples cannot be compared with apples or oranges with oranges in the context of hospitals, the differential in staff numbers, including doctors, nurses and administrative staff, is huge and makes no sense. The reconfiguration of hospitals in the mid-west was done at the wrong time and without sufficient money. We all know what happened and it is not the fault of anyone in this room but we are now left in a dreadful situation, where people, including members of my own family, are afraid to go into UHL. I do not blame them. The differential across support staff, administrative staff, nurses, medical staff and other health care professionals is huge. I will not even bother going through the figures, which were provided by the HSE. In terms of the number of beds we are looking at 432 versus 659. I know that Professor Keane is currently preparing a report but I do not have any faith in that process because the amount of time spent there was very short. I do not want a report to be published that is about process but not about resources because the two go hand in hand. We cannot solve problems in the mid-west without dealing with the resource issue. People are afraid to address the resource issue.

It is then perceived as blame. I am gone beyond worrying about blame. Of course there are process issues but the resource gaps here are ginormous compared to other hospitals. I put forward a range of interim short-term solutions. I have listed them multiple times on the record of the Dáil and in the committee and they have all been ignored. I am really worried about the narrative being put out and being influenced with regard to University Hospital Limerick from a HSE corporate point of view versus what is real on the ground with the staff and management in the hospital, whom I do not blame because they work as hard as they can.

A report has come out in the past 48 hours that has been done by two pretty eminent NHS doctors, Dr. Chris Moulton and Dr. Cliff Mann. It shows their estimate that since 2016 of those who have been waiting in an NHS accident and emergency department for between six and 11 hours almost 5,500 have died. If we extrapolate this data what does it mean for us here in Ireland? I ask the Minister what we will we do. I ask him not to list all the stuff about the MRI and a few extra beds because I have heard it all before. They will not have the impact. I live there. It is chronically bad. It is catastrophic. People will die in the coming months. What are we going to do? I am begging the Minister. We need solutions. People living near me will potentially die because of this and this is despite the fact that everyone in the hospital is working so hard. Please, this is a last request to the Minister.