Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The task force on overcrowding and trolleys in hospitals and emergency departments has been allocated an additional €74 million to ease the difficulties. It is not acceptable to have somebody of an advanced age on a trolley for anything longer than a number of hours. This is something that hospital management must address. Anybody who has experience of waiting with an elderly person in the small hours knows that is a difficult and worrying place to be. The additional resources for and development of the urgent assessment units and special access for older people are working really well in several hospitals around the country. The ideal would be that somebody of an advanced age, with a complex medical history, should not have to go through the normal emergency section but should be able to go to the urgent assessment units.

I agree with the Deputy that primary care will be the best basis for the health service in this and every other country in years to come because it achieves the objective of helping to keep people out of hospitals. Very fine primary health care centres are being built around the country. In my constituency, one opened recently on the Navan Road. It is a fine three-storey building with diverse primary medical care facilities. In Corduff where, when Fianna Fáil was in government it had been promised for more than a decade during the best period of the boom, it was an empty site with grass growing on it.

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