Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have proposed this issue for discussion every day this week and I thank the Office of the Ceann Comhairle for selecting it today. We need straight answers on the opening of a new emergency department in Limerick University Hospital. I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State, Deputy McEntee, in saying I had hoped the Minister would come to the House to provide direct answers to our questions. Having visited the hospital, the Minister is aware of the position.

For months, we have been told the emergency department is due to open in May of this year. However, the Government has consistently avoided confirming this date. I am of the view that the reason for this relates more to funding than to a difficulty in recruiting staff. My understanding of the HSE service plan is that it provides sufficient money to open the new emergency department in the autumn and that an additional allocation would be required to open it in May. If that assumption is correct, I call on the Minister to insist that funds are made available to open the emergency department in May 2017, as originally scheduled and restated on many occasions.

Earlier this week, we learned that the Government could find €120 million in unallocated savings to meet the cost of an increase in pay for public sector workers. While I do not begrudge these workers a pay increase, I understand that the shortfall in funding to open the emergency department in University Hospital Limerick is a fraction of €120 million. This is a matter of life and death and I do not say that lightly. Patients and staff in the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick have been squashed into a space that is not fit for purpose. The hospital's trolley figures have been among the highest in the country for months. Only recently, the chief fire officer in Limerick warned that the fire service would "have to take enforcement action if things don't improve." Fire officers do not make idle threats and if the chief fire officer's intervention forces a decision to be taken to open the emergency department in May, I welcome it.

Recently, as many as 16 ambulances were lined up outside University Hospital Limerick because they could not disembark patients due to overcrowding. We have heard many harrowing stories, which I do not propose to rehearse. However, I was struck by one particular case of a man with bowel disease who publicly declared his name and address and provided highly personal information about the difficulties he experienced in the accident and emergency department. This took great courage but the individual in question acted to highlight the intolerable conditions at the hospital. At a protest on this issue last week, which I attended, people explained why the issue was so important that they had come out in protest.

Staff at University Hospital Limerick are struggling to manage and I commend all of them, from the most senior to the most junior member of staff and across medical and non-medical grades. While I am aware that emergency departments are under pressure all over the country, in the case of University Hospital Limerick one element of the solution can be implemented, namely, the opening of the new emergency department. This will not solve all the hospital's problems with capacity and bed numbers, as these problems are shared by all hospitals, but a new department would provide space and dignity for patients and a decent working environment for staff.

The building has been constructed and the fit-out is proceeding according to plan and on schedule and recruitment is under way. I ask the Minister of State to confirm that the emergency department will open in May.

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