Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Over the past few months I have visited, as no doubt the Taoiseach has, quite a number of accident and emergency units throughout the country. The Government seems to miss the point that older people filling hospital beds are not there by choice. If the health system was properly planned and was in a position to deal with their requirements it would provide better facilities for them to be at home, where they want to be, so they would be in hospital only for the shortest possible time. I do not know if the Taoiseach and his Ministers appreciate the level of fear people have about going to hospital in the first place — fear of infection, of picking up some ailment other than what they are going to have attended to in hospital. That is a genuine fear among the general population.

What has happened to the three special injury units which were to be provided in 2005 and to the nine 50-bed convalescent units which were to be provided as step-down facilities? There should surely be some joined-up thinking between the Department of Health and Children and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. It is intolerable that as a consequence of the new social phenomenon of total abuse of alcohol and drugs, accident and emergency units in almost every hospital are visited at weekends by drunks and their hangers-on, who go there to cause intimidation and assault on front-line staff, who must bear the brunt of the Government's failure in this regard. Is it time that assaulting a member of staff in an accident and emergency unit was classed as a particular offence? Is it time for us to have special rooms, wet rooms as Deputy Twomey calls them, where people can be allowed the privilege of sleeping off their intoxication and be charged handsomely for that privilege? Their friends and hangers-on who cause assault, fear and intimidation of staff and patients must be removed from accident and emergency units. Is it time we realised the current situation is worse than it was nine years ago? How can the Taoiseach say the situation is improving when we know that the number of people attending accident and emergency units is the same as it was years ago, and that people are now attending in situations of far greater chaos, and with a greater sense of fear and intimidation? I raise this issue because front-line staff in all those units are bearing the brunt of public frustration at the Government's failure to plan properly for health situations and provide facilities and a service for people when they need them most. People deserve better.

See this speech in context