John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Waiting times are off the rails. The figures speak for themselves. I want to address a couple of issues that we should look at that are of no great cost to the Exchequer but would, in my opinion, make an appreciable difference. The first is that the winter planning should be done now so that when the crisis occurs and our emergency departments start to fill up in the winter months, we have a plan in place that does not result in cancelling elective procedures and closing up all other areas of the hospital to deal with an emergency department crisis. I ask that, in the winter planning process the Government is undergoing, which I hope it is undergoing as we speak, that no elective procedures are cancelled as part of that plan. All the Government is doing is exacerbating the problem and further increasing waiting lists.

I have just come from a briefing by Nursing Homes Ireland in Buswells, and I am reliably informed that, at any one time, there are approximately 1,000 to 1,200 beds in the system which are unused. Surely it is within the mindset and ability of the HSE to liaise with Nursing Homes Ireland to get patients who are well enough to be out of hospital but not well enough to be at home to convalesce in nursing homes, which would free up, at any one time, 1,000 to 1,200 places, where elective surgeries and waiting lists could be dealt with in a manner which would improve the situation. Rather than rattle out figures to the Minister of State and tell him the obvious that he knows already, I make those two suggestions as something that he could work at to try to improve the situation because, for a population of 4 million people to have a waiting list in excess of 500,000 is unacceptable.

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