Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The figures are stark. Some 98,981 patients spent one night or more on a trolley last year. In Portlaoise alone, 3,203 people spent one night or more on a trolley. On Monday night of this week, 15 people were on trolleys in Portlaoise. There is a plan before the Minister to close Portlaoise emergency department, forcing patients to go to Tullamore, where there were 35 patients on trolleys on Monday, or to Tallaght, where there were a further ten, and that was one of the best recent days in Tallaght. Any proposal to close Portlaoise hospital and push people to other overcrowded hospitals will not work and these figures show it. The Taoiseach committed today, and I hope I heard him correctly, that no emergency department would be closed. I hope he adheres to that and I welcome that if that is the case. The people of Laois, Offaly and south Kildare who depend on Portlaoise hospital deserve better and the people of the State deserve better. Action is needed in four specific areas. We can all see what the problems are and we have to say what the solutions are. Sinn Féin is constantly putting forward costed solutions. There are 162 fewer hospital beds now than there were in 2008, yet the population of the State has increased dramatically.

We propose to immediately increase the number of beds by 500 at a cost of €153 million. That is in our alternative budget. There is a shortage of general practitioners, GPs, in the country, with a huge shortage in Laois. Sinn Féin would focus our health service more on primary care, catching people before they have to go to hospital and providing care in the community. We provide for the recruitment of 200 extra GPs in our budget. We would recruit 500 additional nurses each year over the next five years, and 800 consultants over a five-year period. We know it will take time and that we cannot do it in one or two years. We would also increase home care packages. I will say a quick word on this issue. We want to increase home help hours by 20% and we budgeted for that. It is in our costed proposals. We put forward those solutions in those four areas. Step-down facilities need to be utilised, such as at Abbeyleix hospital in my own constituency. The Minister is aware of this. We are meeting the committee for Abbeyleix hospital on Thursday night about this. As elderly patients in Portlaoise hospital could be discharged to that facility, Abbeyleix now needs to be expanded and upgraded.

My final words are on home help schemes. I had a case in my office this morning where a woman was granted one hour, seven mornings a week, to keep her in her home in a rural area on the side of the Slieve Bloom mountains. If that woman does not get that help, she will be in hospital. She was granted it in May and still has not received it. She has been put on a waiting list. Employ some of the unemployed people on the dole for home help and let us keep people in their local areas and local communities. It would cost approximately €100 a week. To put people in a home would cost €1,000 a week. Those are the economics.

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