Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of the State. As with Deputy Carey and other Members of the Oireachtas, I had an opportunity to meet senior management and staff at the hospital in Limerick in recent days. While they are coping to the best of their ability, they are under enormous pressure. The new accident and emergency department at the hospital, which was opened to much fanfare, has seen a very considerable increase in admissions in the past number of years. It has grown steadily since 2014. Notwithstanding the state of the art facilities in the accident and emergency department, the bed capacity behind it is not adequate or appropriate to meet the growing demands and needs of the region. Part of the issue is demographics and part of it has to do with the way in which reconfiguration was, rightly, accepted by the region. It has put an intolerable burden on the staff and, more particularly, on the patients who present and who are left for an inordinate amount of time waiting in unacceptable conditions. There was a very clear belief that the 60-bed modular unit can be brought on board quickly if the funding is put in place. However, it will still take some time to build. We have not yet entered into the difficult winter period of the winter vomiting bug and other stresses on the health services which will result in increased numbers of patients presenting and, therefore, increased chaos in the accident and emergency department. Even in advance of that, we still have 60 to 70 people per day on trolleys. It is not acceptable.

A number of initiatives can be taken quickly. We need an urgent response from the Department in terms of putting the moneys aside. My understanding, and that of other Members who were at the meeting, is that proposals are coming from the hospital and if they are not already with the Department they will be within the next number of days. To alleviate the really short-term issues, we need funding to open an additional ten beds, which I understand can be done with some reorientation within the hospital. A second trauma theatre at weekends would mean that lots of the work that presents over the weekend would get treated and dealt with over the weekend and it would take away the pressure on Mondays. The acute medical assessment unit should be moved from an 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Friday unit to a 24-7 unit. The acute surgical admissions unit needs to be open on a 24-7 basis. It will ensure we do not have peaks and troughs and that work can be progressed more evenly throughout the week so we do not see this spike on a Tuesday. That is the kind of work that needs to be done. I hope that, notwithstanding the additional funding that has been provided to the Department as a result of the recent budget, we can see those short-term funds made available to address the immediacy of the crisis and then work towards getting the additional bed capacity through the modular unit that is proposed. Hopefully we can then move to the long-term situation where the 100 beds that were planned and proposed for the hospital come on board.

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