Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There are 526 people on trolleys today. As was mentioned, we have had up to and more than 700 people on trolleys on certain days. Having more than 500 people on trolleys on a daily basis is becoming the new norm, which is shocking. St. Vincent's Hospital ran out of trolleys this week. People had to be accommodated on seats because they could not even get a trolley. That is how bad it is. We have 502,482 people on outpatient waiting lists. I will give the Taoiseach an example of what this means. I know of one lady who needs a knee operation. She will have to wait a year and a half for her operation and she cannot work as a result of needing the operation. She is employed but cannot work. She will be dependent on social welfare for a year and a half. How many of the more than 500,000 people on outpatient waiting lists are also costing the State social welfare expenditure in addition to they not being able to get urgently needed treatment because of these waiting lists?

Are there any radical plans to deal with this? I point to the issues that are being screamed at the Taoiseach. If we are going to open the beds we need, we must pay the nurses if we are to recruit the number of nurses that are necessary. That means giving the pay equality for which nurses have been asking. Tara Nic Chormaic's letter, which I quoted a few times this week, referred to the pay issue and the housing issue. Unless pay is increased and the Government provides affordable accommodation, we will not be able to recruit the nurses we need to open the beds to deal with these crises.

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