Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

On 12 April 2005, the Taoiseach made one of his greatest understatements when he said that "accident and emergency facilities are not up to scratch". He was right. On that day, the Irish Nurses Organisation estimated there were 350 patients on trolleys or chairs in our hospitals. Apart from stating the blindingly obvious, the Taoiseach also expressed confidence at that time that the Tánaiste's much-vaunted €70 million programme would deliver improvements. The Tánaiste told us in 2004 that we would see improvements by March 2005. In January 2005, she told us there would be significant improvements by the end of that year. She now seems to have abandoned any work on accident and emergency units, deciding instead to focus her energies elsewhere.

The facts indicate that this problem is getting worse. There were 392 people on trolleys and chairs in accident and emergency departments yesterday. There were 218 people in similar circumstances on the same day in 2005, which was considered at the time to be a crisis. It is incredible that there were 75 people on trolleys and chairs at Tallaght Hospital yesterday. Today's The Irish Times reports that patients are calling a corridor in the hospital "the Mary Harney suite". Yesterday, there were 22 people on trolleys and chairs at the Mater Hospital, 25 at Beaumont Hospital, 28 at St. James's Hospital, 26 at Cavan General Hospital, 25 at Letterkenny General Hospital and 37 at two hospitals in Cork. Does the Taoiseach have any idea of the discomfort and indignity being suffered by such people on a daily basis, as a consequence of the Government's incompetence? Every time we raise this matter, we are given the same old answers —"we are doing something about it", "we are working on it", "things will get better soon", "it is the patients' fault", "it is the nurses' fault" or "it is the doctors' fault". Nobody on the Government side takes any blame or responsibility for it.

Does the Taoiseach accept that while the number of people attending accident and emergency departments has hardly changed since 1998, the number of people on trolleys and chairs is increasing? Even though we have trebled our expenditure on the health service, the problems in accident and emergency units are going from bad to worse. Will the Taoiseach admit that the Tánaiste's disjointed and incremental plan has failed, that no system of comprehensive response to this crisis has been put in place and that the key stakeholders have not been consulted? Can the Taoiseach offer any explanation of why this problem is continuing to get worse, nine years after his Government took office? Can he indicate to the House the solid action the Government proposes to take to deal with this atrocious situation in a positive manner?

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