Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh míle maith agat, a Chathaoirligh Ghníomhaigh, agus gabhaim mo bhuíochas le Deputy O'Brien freisin.

I want to give two or three examples of the travesty which is the health service currently. A woman in Navan, who lives five minutes from the hospital, had a stroke, but it took 40 minutes for the ambulance to get to the hospital. She was admitted to the hospital for treatment, but then had to wait to be admitted to the National Rehabilitation Hospital, which took approximately 16 weeks. She finally got treatment there and returned home after a period, but had another stroke and was readmitted to the hospital. She was brought to the shower room on one occasion by two nurses, but after one of the nurses was called away, the woman fell and suffered a major brain injury. She was then brought to Beaumont Hospital, where she was given a blood transfusion, but it was the wrong blood, which left her unconscious and with organ failure for a number of months. Now in her mid-60s, she is facing the possibility of being in a nursing home, at her cost, for the rest of her life. The HSE has not stepped up to the plate with regard to this charge.

Another patient at Navan hospital has been waiting to get into the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire for the past six months. When one telephones the hospital one is told he is not there due to a clinical decision when, in reality, it is a resource issue, because they do not have the space.

Believe it or not - this is startling - I know of a woman who stayed in Navan hospital for two years, having been clinically discharged, because the pathway of further treatment was blocked by a lack of resources somewhere else in the system. Her lying in a hospital bed for two years incurred a cost of millions of euro to the State, taking account of the hospital charge per night. She was forced to be there because she could not move on to the next stage of her treatment. There is a massive capacity issue in the health service and it can only be addressed by the provision of funds. There is a need for reform of the HSE as well, but the Government has failed to invest the necessary resources for these issues to be tackled. Until it does so, we will have a two-tier health system, with half a million people remaining on waiting lists for treatment while those who have private health care are fast-tracked.

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