Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I welcome to the House the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children with responsibility for children, Deputy Brian Lenihan. I would have liked to see the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children here because this is such a serious issue.

Next month, I will have been three years protesting outside the accident and emergency unit at the Mater Hospital. I have been there every Saturday between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. I did not do that for the exercise but because three years ago next month a lady aged 89 years entered the accident and emergency unit in the Mater Hospital. She had a slight heart attack on a Monday and the following Thursday a member of her family contacted me asking if it was possible to get a bed for her because she would have her 90th birthday on the following Saturday, and wanted to be in a bed to receive her grandchildren. She did not want to be sitting on a chair or on a trolley in the accident and emergency unit.

I contacted the bed management section in the hospital which said it would do its best, it could not do anything that day but would get a bed on the Friday. I checked on the Friday and it had given the lady a bed. I visited her on the Thursday night. She was a fabulous, sprightly little old lady, full of life. I telephoned the hospital on the following Monday and the management told me the lady was fine, had been treated and had gone home. A week later a member of the family telephoned me to say that in fact the lady had never gone home but had died that day in the hospital.

It was atrocious that a lady of that age should be kept on a trolley for virtually a week, and that I should have been told a lie about what had happened. I subsequently raised this matter with the hospital management which said it would look into it but I never received a satisfactory response. I was determined that, arising out of that incident, I would leave no stone unturned until the waiting lists in the Mater Hospital had been eliminated.

Unfortunately it has not been eliminated although three years have passed, and for half of that time there has been a new Minister for Health and Children, who, on taking office in September 2004 said her priority was to sort out the problems in accident and emergency units and that she and the Government in which she served would be judged on her success in this matter. In January 2005 she said that people judge our health service by their experience of accident and emergency units. The Tánaiste went on to provide her ten-point plan to deal with it. That plan was supposed to bear fruit within six months. Much more than 18 months have now gone by and the situation is worse than it was when the Tánaiste took up office. Last week we saw a record 455 people on chairs and trolleys in accident and emergency units. The stage has now been reached whereby there is no room for the normal chair, an armchair. We have had the trolleys, the armchairs, soft plastic chairs and now hard chairs because there is no room for the normal chairs. It is scandalous.

A Minister arrived to deal with the matter and the situation has worsened rather than improved. I do not know where we can go from here unless we can deal with the situation of an 89 year old lady who has never cost the State a penny, and there are many similar people now in need of State assistance. They are in their hour of need and are let down by the State and the services. We must deal with that and I hope the Minister of State has some answers for me.

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