Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am conscious that others want to come in. I will let them in in a moment.

I have a couple of comments to make. I have been one of those people who has been on a trolley. I have been in an emergency department where there were no free trolleys or chairs. I have been there with a loved one who was dying in the hospital system. People have their own experiences as to how good or how bad the system is in that regard. I had just last week a man in my constituency office who said people have this idea that they will be able to get a cup of tea or something to eat in an emergency department. Someone can be nine hours in an emergency department and the vending machine will be empty. The man in my constituency office said the only thing left in the machine when he was there was sugary popcorn. This is an elderly man who was seriously ill at the time. There are all these lived experiences.

What we are talking about this morning is the overcrowding crisis in our hospitals. There has been collective agreement, judging from many of the submissions, that the solution is Sláintecare. As the witnesses will probably be aware, every two months, following the collapse of the oversight group for the implementation of Sláintecare, the committee has tried to bring in the two chief executives, Paul Reid and Robert Watt, to discuss that. In their latest submission to us they said 87.9% of the Sláintecare goals are on track. The witnesses say clearly in their submissions that this change is not visible. We in the Opposition hear every day that more money is being put into the health service than ever before, but is that view of Sláintecare and its roll-out borne out in the experience of the witnesses' members? I am conscious that what we have heard today is a clear cry for help about assaults on staff and so on. There is clearly something we as a committee can do about that. It would be interesting to follow up on the health and safety legislation, the amendments to it and so on. If the witnesses have suggestions for amendments they feel need to be made in that area or something positive the committee could do, we will certainly follow that up, including with the chief executive and the head of the Department of Health. We will have them in here in the next month or so. What is the witnesses' experience of Sláintecare?