Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I wish to a raise an issue of considerable importance, namely, the death of a young woman of 39 in tragic circumstances in the accident and emergency unit of the Mater Hospital two weeks ago. The woman, Ms Seville-Doyle, arrived at the hospital, was assigned a chair and was put on a drip while awaiting medical assistance. At 6 a.m., 19 hours after she had arrived, she walked into a toilet unaccompanied where she was later found in a collapsed state by the nurses. Medics telephoned her family at 6.20 a.m. but, due to a lack of parking space in the hospital grounds, the family were not able to arrive before she had passed away.

Let me quote the statement of Mr. Colm Seville, the lady's brother, in the Irish Independent on 26 January:

"When we reached the hospital, they brought us through another route so that we wouldn't have to see the place where she died," Mr. Seville said. "But at one point we ended up in the middle of Accident and Emergency and I just said to a nurse: 'Please tell me my sister wasn't here'. People were sitting on chairs and in corners. The doctors literally had to step over the patients. It was like something out of the Third World." Last night Mr. Seville said: "I felt sorry for the ordinary doctors and nurses on the ground, who are dealing with this on a daily basis."

I am well aware of these dreadful conditions because I go to the hospital every Saturday and spend an hour there between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. I inspect the conditions almost on a weekly basis and note that they are dreadful. There is a prefabricated building which is totally unsuited to interaction between the patients and hospital staff. The nurses and doctors do their best but there are long waiting lists. The accident and emergency department is like a railway station or even a cattle mart. People are coming and going and patients are in chairs and on trolleys in passageways and every other nook and cranny. The situation deteriorates even further every winter. I have gone there almost every week for four and a half years and the situation has not improved substantially in that time.

The Minister speaks constantly about her ten-point plan and how community care services are being put in place. In this way, she assures us, all this so-called bed-blocking, that dreadful phrase she uses, will be dealt with. The reality, however, is that waiting lists persist and accident and emergency departments remain overcrowded. Hygiene standards are atrocious. It is simply not good enough that people who are seriously ill find themselves in the frightening situation of not knowing how long they must wait in such unacceptable conditions. The Minister has been sitting on her hands on this issue, making promises but delivering nothing. It is the most vulnerable section of the population, the elderly and seriously ill, who are most affected by the situation.

I received a letter on 26 November from Phil O'Neill, head of operations and clinical support in the Health Service Executive. It stated:

I am writing to express the hospital's concerns regarding your unauthorised contact with patients in the emergency department of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and respectfully request that you discontinue this practice.

I have been calling into the hospital for four and a half years but now it seems I am not authorised to do so. The letter continues:

Hospital staff members in the emergency department work in an extremely challenging and stressful environment and must be permitted to fulfil their responsibilities without additional disruption from unwarranted personnel.

There has been a failure of management and leadership at the highest level in the HSE and the Department of Health and Children to deal with the matter. I am not even sure whether the HSE is conducting an internal inquiry. Such an inquiry is inadequate in any case. There must be an independent external inquiry into the death of this young woman.

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