Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important motion. I thank the wonderful staff of our hospitals and our health service across the State. Without the tireless work they do, our health service would be in a much worse situation. Those who experience the stress of having their children or their parents in hospital are having to deal with the added worry that their loved ones will not get a bed and instead will be left sitting for hours on trolleys or plastic chairs in accident and emergency wards.

It may be a new year but, unfortunately, some things never change. As we welcomed the new year, 2018 started with a record 677 patients on trolleys across the State. It is disgraceful and upsetting that children are also being placed on trolleys. I cannot understand how the practice of placing people on trolleys continues or that the Government fails miserably on this issue every year. This Government and that which preceded it have had seven years to get a handle on the problem but instead it continues to worsen.

Solutions have been rehearsed in the House time and again. Closed beds must be reopened, qualified staff must be recruited and retained and adequate step-down facilities must be provided. Home care hours are also needed in order that patients who are in a position to move on can do so. Members of the public have listened to these debates over and over again and they are sick to the back teeth of all the talk and no action. The phrase I use to describe the Government's approach to the health crisis is that it is tinkering around the edges. It appears to me and others that the will to make the big decisions on investment, pay and conditions for staff and the implementation of recommendations such as those in the Sláintecare report is absent. This must change.

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