Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At some stage in our lives, each one of us will have to rely on nurses and medical staff when we are sick and at our weakest and most vulnerable. The work these people do each day is incredible and providing them with good pay and conditions should not be up for debate. My constituents in Limerick regularly tell me stories of how impressive and hard working the nurses and health workers are in University Hospital Limerick. The staff members there are under huge pressure due to shortages of staff, beds and lack of investment but always try to make sure their patients get the best treatment.

They need Government help. This is not being provided by the Government of which the Minister is a member. Only last week, a woman of 85 years was left on a trolley in the brand new emergency department in University Hospital Limerick for four days, having been admitted with a suspected stroke. This is an horrific way to treat a woman of that age with a serious medical condition. It is left to the nurses to try to squeeze patients into corridors in a chronically overcrowded hospital and to apologise to the patients and their families, when the fault could not be further from their own.

I have often spoken of the dreadful overcrowding in University Hospital Limerick. It is the worst in the country. I have often called on the Minister for step in and address the chaos. Nothing has been done to alleviate the problems. Today, 54 people are lying on trolleys in University Hospital Limerick. The Minister has actually normalised the trolley crisis. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have consistently looked after bankers and big business when called on but front-line staff such as nurses, who are begging for adequate treatment, are ignored. It is a national disgrace. The HSE is struggling to attract back home Irish nurses who have emigrated, which is not surprising. There is a chasm to be bridged in making our system more attractive to work in compared with health systems abroad. I have no confidence that this Government will do that.

Fine Gael and the Independent members of the Government have failed to stem the problems of our health service. I reiterate what other speakers have said, namely, that Sinn Féin would not allow this scandal in our health service to continue.

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