Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach is critical of the nurses' decision to strike. He claims it will not solve the problems in accident and emergency units, but what are the nurses to do? We have had a series of shocking revelations, such as the one that is cited ad nauseamof a man in his 90s being forced to spend 29 hours on a trolley. These are the front-line conditions in which nurses are working. They are being forced to take industrial action in support of all front-line staff and in defence of patient care. Those staff and patients have been let down by the Government. This crisis is a direct result of the Government's continual refusal to deal with the accident and emergency unit overcrowding chaos and resource a public health service properly. This is the flaw in the situation.

In 2013, the then Minister, Deputy Reilly, stated we would never again see 569 people on trolleys in a single day while this Government was in office. Under the current Minister, Deputy Varadkar, the situation has worsened. There are increased numbers on trolleys, delayed discharges, a lack of home care packages and a lack of public and nursing home beds.

Front-line workers perform heroics every day. In the first ten months of this year, almost 80,000 admitted patients were on trolleys, the highest ever figure for the first ten months of any year since trolley watch began. As we sit in the Chamber and the Taoiseach jokes and banters with Fianna Fáil, there are 339 patients on trolleys. For the 15th month in a row, last October saw an increase in the level of overcrowding in emergency departments.

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