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

University Hospital Limerick is in an appalling condition. The full capacity protocol has been in use every single day since 2016. A total of 11,437 sick patients lay on trolleys in the hospital last year alone, the highest number in the State. Today 57 people from the mid-west region are on trolleys, the highest number in the State. There are 34,133 people on waiting lists at the hospital. The Government has made these disgraceful statistics normal in Limerick. In Janauary 2018 I requested a meeting with the Minister for Health in January to make constructive suggestions on what could be done to help to address the overcrowding problem in University Hospital Limerick, but he never bothered to get back to me about it. I have lost count of the number of Topical Issue matters I have submitted on the hospital, yet for the ones that were selected, the Minister never once turned up to answer a single question. I lost confidence in the Minister a long time ago, as did the people who use University Hospital Limerick. This new scandal of the national children's hospital is just another to add to the long list of failures. Fine Gael has been in government for eight years and the situation at University Hospital Limerick has deteriorated substantially in that time. The number of patients on trolleys has increased by 212% between 2011 and last year, from 3,658 to 11,437. I am shocked by those Limerick Deputies who are crying out locally in their constituencies about the need for better health services and who, when they have a chance to do something about it in the Dáil, literally choose to sit on their hands. Deputy Micheál Martin has not even bothered to come into the Chamber for this debate. The Minister for Health has normalised the impossible daily situation in University Hospital Limerick. As he has completely failed in his duty to provide adequate health services for citizens in Limerick, it is my duty as their representative to vote no confidence in him.

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