Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's difficulty is that it is a national emergency, because 45 people were waiting on trolleys in Beaumont Hospital a few days ago. Despite all the excuses and the pretence, this did not sneak up on the Minister. The problem has been evident for some time. It has also been evident in the context of nursing homes. As everybody knows, the demographic trends clearly show that our population is getting older annually. There is a 4% increase in the number of people over the age of 80 every year. The idea that this just happened all of a sudden and everything had been fine all along is not the case. The Minister was forewarned about this, as was the previous Minister.

We simply cannot have a situation where over 700 people who are defined as late dischargers are in beds in hospitals throughout the country every night. Mr. Duffy said there are 100 in his hospital who should be elsewhere. However, there is a paltry sum for nursing homes in the Supplementary Estimates and in next year's funding as well. The bottom line is that there is a huge scarcity of nursing home beds and that issue has not been addressed either in the context of extra funding for the fair deal scheme or in the incentivisation of the provision of extra nursing home beds. Until such time as the Minister resolves that, there will be people on trolleys for a very long time.

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