Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Taoiseach's personal commitment to end the scandal of patients on hospital trolleys. After ten years we deserve to hear how he will end that scandal given that today we have 601 patients on trolleys. They are people whom it has been deemed necessary to admit to hospital but who cannot find a bed and are on hospital trolleys as we speak. Unfortunately, this issue has become normalised. Nobody in this House, bar Sinn Féin, has even raised the issue this morning. It speaks to the fact that it is nearly acceptable that we have hundreds of sick people who day after day and week after week are not able to get a hospital bed and may have to wait hours and sometimes days for one. After six years in office, what is the Taoiseach's plan to come good on the personal commitment he gave the Irish people ten years ago to end the scandal of hospital trolleys to ensure we never see a day like this again when 601 sick, vulnerable patients in this country are forced onto hospital trolleys because there are no beds in the system for them?

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