Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. I know many nurses who no longer practice nursing and on pressing them for the reason they dropped out of the profession, they told me they no longer got pleasure from nursing. The constant pressure they were under and the overcrowded conditions also contributed to their decision to leave the profession. We are losing experienced skilled professionals at a time when we are going overseas to recruit staff. That does not make sense.

One need only visit an accident and emergency department at the weekend to see the problems that exist. From my few experiences of visiting accident and emergency departments, I detected that a menacing atmosphere prevailed. That is the only way I could describe the atmosphere. Overcrowding in the accident and emergency departments leads to a lack of security. If one were to watch the main entrance to a hospital, one would notice four or five people entering the hospital at a time looking for the accident and emergency department. It is unfair on nurses and doctors and it is impossible to ask them to monitor the people coming into the accident and emergency department. They do not know who is visiting a patient and that adds to the problem. There is no doubt that people being drunk in accident and emergency department is causing a problem.

A few weeks ago I attended the Naas General Hospital protest — that hospital together with Tallaght Hospital and Blanchardstown Hospital serve the people of north Kildare — which has 200 beds, 36 patients were on trolleys. That was the day that Punchestown festival got under way a great contrast could be made between that festival and the hospital protest. I agree with what an earlier speaker said about the proposal to provide "wet rooms" in that there would not be space to provide such a room in the hospital to which I referred. There is not even space for trolleys because it is so overcrowded. This problem needs to be addressed. Portacabins were provided while the hospital was under construction. I am sure they were the same type of portacabins that were offered on "Liveline" but for health and safety reasons were not accepted. We drop our standards in a crisis. It is important to focus on the health and safety issue in regard to hospitals.

There is also a problem isolating superbugs as a result of a lack of space, which is a health and safety issue. The major problem is the lack of space which needs to be addressed in a comprehensive manner.

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