Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When I said more of the same, the Minister read out statistics. I asked for them so I am not criticising him for that. They showed a rate of increase, and I am not brilliant at hard sums, such that by my reckoning it will probably take a decade or more to get back up to the level we were at before the crisis. That is before taking account of the fact that we are moving away from a hospital-centred model, supposedly, although we obviously are not because we do not have the staff to do it. We are also dealing with an increased population. My area of north Dublin is an example. It has the fastest growing population in the State and the number of nurses has declined. At the rate of increase many of those people who are living in my constituency will be shuffling around looking for their pensions before they will see anything even approaching adequate community services. Meanwhile the pressures on the acute hospital sector will not be alleviated because we do not have the staff in the community.

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