Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My own local hospital, University Hospital Galway, UHG, which is the busiest in the country, is an example of the woes of the current health system, with its growing waiting lists and overcrowded emergency department. The situation has been made worse by the fact that leaking roofs over the operating theatres in Merlin Park Hospital have resulted in some procedures having to be carried out in UHG and, of course, the cancellation of many operations. I appreciate that there has been some movement to reduce the inpatient and day case list but I find it disturbing that this hospital still accounts for more than a quarter of all the patients in the country who are waiting for more than 15 months for inpatient treatment that they badly need. Put another way, one in 11 patients on the waiting lists for inpatient or day case treatment nationally have been waiting for more than 15 months. In Galway that proportion is one in six patients. It is shocking, for instance, that a total of 114 people have been waiting for more than a year in Galway for cardiac treatment, when this time last year there was just one patient in this situation. There were 17 people last year waiting for more than a year and a half for oral surgery and this total has since soared to 570. We seem to be going backwards, rather than forward, in terms of health care and the reforms suggested in the Sláintecare report cannot come fast enough.

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