Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

This issue is somewhat like a recurring decimal. Today the figures from the Irish Nurses Organisation show that 392 patients are on trolleys across the State. This is not unique, as last week there were 383 on trolleys. On Wednesday there were 378 on trolleys. In October 2004 the Minister for Health and Children announced a ten point plan to deal with accident and emergency departments with great fanfare. Seventeen months later, in March 2006, while still Tánaiste, she declared the crisis in accident and emergency units to be a national emergency. Today, however, nearly 400 patients remain on trolleys across the State.

It has come to the point where Beaumont Hospital has issued a statement asking people not to attend its accident and emergency unit except in emergencies, because of the extreme pressure on its services, as 52 patients wait for admission. This is appalling. The hospital now has more than 100 patients waiting for a bed to become available in a more appropriate post-acute setting. It is advising people not to attend its accident and emergency services.

We have had ten years of this from Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats. We have had overcrowding, the spread of infectious diseases, hundreds of patients on trolleys every month, the figures for which are massaged, while operations are cancelled every year. Some 29,000 people are on waiting lists. They have been failed by the Government.

It is about time politicians in the Government parties, particularly Members, were exposed to what is happening because they are secreted away. I will go to Beaumont Hospital at 6.30 p.m. today and invite the Taoiseach to come with me. Let us get stuck in traffic if we must. Let us go to the accident and emergency unit and meet the patients waiting on trolleys who must put up with the remnants of what was supposed to be a world-class health service. I challenge the man of the people to come with another and examine this issue.

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