Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Today Irish nurses commenced their latest campaign to highlight the disgraceful scenes at accident and emergency departments around the country. At the Mater Hospital, Cork University Hospital and Roscommon General Hospital nurses were forced on to the streets to protest during their lunch break about the continuously bad situation in accident and emergency units. Their demands are not unreasonable. Like the rest of the people, they want an accident and emergency service that meets the needs of society. They want an end to hundreds of patients on trolleys in hospital corridors throughout the length and breadth of the country. Last week there were 404 patients on trolleys in hospitals throughout the country, today there are 350 patients on trolleys. Every few months the Government gives us a whole new raft of solutions to deal with the problem.

The Tánaiste, who has been in the Department of Health and Children for six months, building on the seven and a half years of prior service by the Government, has announced another ten-point plan, which is supposed to sort out this business. Will the Taoiseach give the House any reason to believe this plan will work where no others have worked? Will he give a definite timeframe as to when this ten-point plan will be implemented? Will he tell us what has happened to the accident and emergency agreement drawn up on the last occasion when the 2002 work stoppages took place to highlight the overcrowding in hospitals which has worsened since then? When will the additional acute and non-acute beds and primary care units promised by the Government in 2001 and 2002, which will only offer the long-term solution to this crisis, be provided? There are repeated incidences of people who leave their beds or trolleys in hospital corridors to use the toilet or to go outside for a smoke only to find when they return that their bed has been taken. This is truly disgraceful. In a country rolling in money it is sad to have the nurses of Ireland out on the streets again in an effort to deal with a problem to which the Government committed itself to solving over the past eight years.

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