Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are commitments in the programme for Government to improve waiting times for hospital procedures and to reduce the length of time from when a patient presents at an emergency department to his or her discharge home or admission to a ward. To implement these commitments, however, there must be a full quota of nursing staff. Today there are 3,500 fewer nurses employed by the HSE than in 2009. There are shortages in most specialised areas. The HSE is spending €1.2 million on agency nurses per week instead of making real efforts to fill the vacant positions. There are no real incentives to attract Irish nurses home to work in Irish hospitals. In the past two to three years, up to 20,000 Irish nurses applied for certificates to work abroad. This in an alarming reality in our health service today.

Nurses are working overtime, are not being replaced when on leave and are expected constantly to meet increased demands with fewer staff. The Government and the HSE seem detached from this and are not tackling the issue. Last August a report was prepared on the crisis in emergency departments. It recommended recruiting 200 additional nurses to cope with the extra patients in emergency departments who were waiting for admission, but not one nurse has been recruited. The Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, will launch the HSE service plan today which will read like a work of fiction unless practical measures are taken to address what is, by any yardstick, a substantial manpower crisis in our health service, particularly in nursing where there is an acute shortage. That shortage is now impacting on the quality of care and the delivery of services to patients. It is quite staggering.

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