Séamus Kirk (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a short contribution to this important debate in support of my party's motion. This also is an opportunity to compliment Fianna Fáil's health spokesperson, Deputy Kelleher, who has done an excellent job in that role. The role of health spokesperson is challenging and demanding, and since his appointment he really has been excellent at identifying the issues that affect hospitals, individuals, patients and the hospital staff.

Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, has been in the news headlines continuously, and unfortunately, this has been for all the wrong reasons. Headlines such as "Drogheda trolley crisis escalates," "Trolley crisis continues at our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda," and "Drogheda hospital: 'It is wall-to-wall trolleys,' " have been catching the attention of newspaper readers and others who have an interest in this issue. In 2011, one key element in the Fine Gael Party's manifesto presented to the people was the reduction of waiting lists. In 2012, a press release sent out by the same party stated that hospitals across Ireland had achieved considerable success in reaching the so-called nine-month priority treatment list, PTL, target, which includes inpatient and day cases. Three years later, however, we have gone backwards, as the waiting list timeframe has increased by 60% from last year. The Minister of State should note that this is neither progress nor positive action but is a step backwards. Instead, the Minister moved the goalposts and set an 18-month waiting target, to be achieved by the middle of this year. Hospital waiting lists were subject to the same strategy of diminishing expectations that unfortunately has been employed in other areas of the health service. Incredibly, even this vastly reduced target has not been met within the Minister's timeframe.

I will give Members a snapshot of the current statistics in respect of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda. First, I applaud the staff in the hospital, who do tremendous work under a heavy stress load. They save lives daily in that hospital. However, the situation is getting worse and, unfortunately, there is no end in sight and no formula to tackle the serious problems that exist there. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital endured the greatest level of overcrowding in the month of August, when there were 680 people on trolleys.

In over a year the number of people waiting on an outpatient appointment has increased by 579%. There are now an additional 1,349 people waiting longer than 12 months for an appointment, which is scandalous. The trolley crisis in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda has been escalating throughout the year. In June, a total of 728 people were on trolleys for an extended period of time, which represented a surge of 243% since 2013. My office has been inundated with calls from people who are alarmed by this escalating crisis. They are worried that members of their family and close neighbours will not be able to access adequate care if needed in an emergency. The conditions in the hospital, brought about owing to a lack of resourcing by Government, is appalling.

When in power, Fianna Fáil introduced the National Treatment Purchase Fund, the main aim of which was to purchase spare capacity from the private sector to reduce the number of public patients waiting for treatment in public hospitals. We propose to reactivate this fund. Fianna Fáil in government will convene a special task force to produce a plan to ensure all scheduled day case and inpatient care is delivered within the internationally recognised target of six months. What we need is an immediate enforcement of a six-hour target for the one million patients attending emergency departments every year, with a ban on any patient staying over six hours in an emergency department. In the UK, there is a target of 90% to be accommodated within four hours.

I am very worried about this crisis. It is impacting every family in the north east, including Louth, Cavan, Meath and Monaghan. I urge the Minister to tackle this problem and to do so urgently.

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