Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom cúpla ráiteas a thabhairt don Aire mar gheall ar an mhéid atá ag titim amach i gContae na Mí. I have been given a couple of statements recently relating to the difficulties with the trolley count in Navan. I hear that people are stuck in the waiting room of the emergency department in Navan without getting access to the hospital itself. They are being forced to wait for long periods in that waiting room after having been triaged and treated. They are forced to wait with needles left in their arms, while waiting for X-rays and for blood tests. Those people are forced to wait on their feet because there are no seats left in the waiting rooms for people trying to get into the hospitals. I heard a report about Drogheda to the effect that it was like a cattle market at the time. One man was obliged to sit in the waiting room for five hours after being triaged. The report stated that the waiting room was full to the brim, that three ambulances had just arrived and they were being forced to wait because they could not leave their patients behind unattended. Dr. Tom Ryan, president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, said that the HSE is rationing intensive care unit, ICU, beds. That means that staff members are forced to prioritise patients in serious need over other patients. The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine stated, on the trolley crisis and waiting list, that up to 350 people will die in Ireland in 2018 because of those two factors.

The trolley count in Navan has quadrupled in the space of one year from 500 people to 2,500. One should put those three sentences together and then consider that it is the objective of the Government and of the HSE to close the ICU and emergency department beds in Navan. I only have a couple of seconds left so I will make a point on the issue of there being no step-down facilities in County Meath whatsoever. Some years ago, I found that a person was forced to wait for 24 months after being clinically discharged from Navan. That person was left in a hospital bed for two years after the doctors said they could not help that person any more because of blocked pathways. I found out in the last months that another person was forced to spend one year on a trolley after being clinically discharged. We had 24 people in hospital beds in our hospital this year who were clinically discharged. That is an entire wardful. We need step-down facilities in Meath to alleviate this crisis.

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