Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In 2002, the then Minister for Health, Deputy Micheál Martin, published the Codd report, entitled Acute Hospital Bed Capacity A National Review. In his written foreword he said:

For some time, it has been evident that the capacity of our acute hospital system has not kept pace with the increasing demands being imposed on it. The consequences of that under-capacity are well known, i.e. cancellation of elective admissions, long delays in accident and emergency departments, waiting lists for elective procedures and unacceptably high bed occupancy levels in the major hospitals.

I use this quote merely to illustrate that very little has changed. Operations are still being deferred and there are long waiting lists and terrible stories of elderly and ill patients lying for days on trolleys. We must construct a way forward for our health system. I refer to the Parliament and not the Government on its own or parties or anybody with ideological or immutable beliefs in the supposed best way forward. There is no perfect way, but surely there is a much better way to provide better results for our citizens.

From the days of Dr. Browne, ideas for the reform of health service have been stymied by vested interests - medical, political and others. If we go on in this fashion, our health service will never be fixed. If this debate were to result in Members of the House merely leaving down their political cudgels and resisting the temptation to knock metaphorical lumps out of one another, it would be something to show the people that we are serious about fixing the system and that we are not playing politics with the issue. This is a new Dáil and it is time for a new start.

There have, of course, been improvements in the health service over recent years. If we were honest, we would acknowledge that the last three Ministers have made improvements, but how can a Minister direct health policy when he or she is constantly firefighting?

I will compare the approach in my constituency, Galway West, with that of Cork to illustrate the problems of health management thinking in this country. These are the people who advise the Minister and devise service plans year after year and decade after decade. Cork is currently in the early stages of planning a new 300-bed acute hospital to relieve pressure on other hospitals and provide state-of-the-art accommodation. One of the first things that stipulated was that the chosen site should be at least 50 acres, and preferably 100 acres. This was to provide room for expansion and the provision of all necessary ancillary services. There is nothing shocking about that. In fact, it proves that good planning is in place.

I refer to the plans for University Hospital Galway. It plans to build a 75-bed extension, but health management cannot tell us how many additional beds that will provide. The extension will not be on a 100-acre or even a 50-acre site but, rather, a 42-acre site. The site is hemmed in by major roads on all sides, and there are significant traffic issues and virtually no parking. The site is very cramped and a car park had to be removed to make space for a new mental health unit.

University Hospital Galway is not a small local hospital. It is a major acute hospital and one of the busiest in the country. It has the longest waiting lists for inpatient and outpatient treatment in the entire country. It is a regional centre of excellence, offering treatment in a variety of specialisations to patients from Donegal to Clare and as far east as Athlone. It has an occupancy rate of almost 98% and is bursting at the seams. The internationally recognised figure for full occupancy is 85%, yet it is building an extension costing €70 million on an already cramped site and cannot tell us how many beds, if any, it will add.

I and others have tried to get answers for months and the hospital simply cannot provide the information. The real fear, which is not unfounded, is that spending a significant sum of money will provide perhaps only seven additional beds. All of this would be bad enough if there was not a second hospital campus in Galway, in Merlin Park, which has been vastly underutilised over the years. It is located on 150 acres of State-owned land and has acres of empty parkland right beside a dual carriageway system. The people of Galway and the rest of Ireland need a state-of-the-art modern acute hospital with sufficient beds. We urgently need a plan to relocate University Hospital Galway to Merlin Park on a phased basis.

Local consultants need to take the lead on this. We have had the Codd report on the need for extra bed capacity and the Hanly report on the need for extra consultants, neither of which was implemented. We have lower numbers of consultants than most of the developed world, something which needs to be addressed. To address the issue, consultants need more beds and the development and funding of proper primary care centres in strategic locations to take the pressure off our hospitals and accident and emergency departments.

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