Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On Tuesday, my party leader, Deputy McDonald, raised the issue of hospital overcrowding with the Tánaiste. I raise it with him again this morning because in the past number of days, the problem has gone from bad to worse.

Early in the week, there were serious problems at Cork University Hospital. There are still significant problems there, with 43 people on trolleys today, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO. To top it all off, there was utter chaos yesterday at University Hospital Limerick, where the number of patients on trolleys reached a level never before seen in any hospital in the history of this State. The INMO recorded 81 people on hospital trolleys yesterday morning. By midday, the number had reached 92. Today, there are 76 people on trolleys in that hospital, while there are 531 people on trolleys in hospitals across the State. This is absolutely scandalous. We are reaching record numbers of people on trolleys and hospitals are in situations of utter chaos. The pictures on the front page of today's Irish Examinerare akin to the scenes in a hospital after a major natural disaster, but there is no natural disaster. These scenes of overcrowded hospitals and patients lying on trolleys in our corridors are becoming all too common. There are patients in University Hospital Limerick who have been waiting for days to get a bed, and all the while, right beside them, ward 1A is closed, padlocked and chained. The Government has put 17 beds in that ward out of commission and that makes absolutely no sense. My colleague, Teachta Quinlivan, has called for the immediate reopening of the ward, and I echo that. The Minister and the HSE should do this without delay.

There are, however, bigger problems at University Hospital Limerick. I have seen correspondence provided to the health committee on behalf of the staff of the hospital. It makes for disturbing reading. The correspondence in question states that University Hospital Limerick continuously fails to adhere to national emergency department escalation policy and remains constantly in full capacity protocol. It states that the additional winter funding provided by the HSE has had no impact on overcrowding. It states that the consequence of all this is that nurses are struggling to provide safe care and cannot adequately monitor or assess patients to the level required. The staff go on to state that this is due to inadequate staffing and the extra trolleys on wards and in the accident and emergency department. This amounts to one thing: an unsafe hospital for patients. It is impacting on patients and putting them at risk and it is affecting the health and safety of staff. Both of these impacts are incredibly worrying. However, this is no longer just a winter problem; it is a problem all year round.

What is going to happen to the patients in University Hospital Limerick on foot of the escalation over the past 48 hours? More generally, what is the Minister's plan to respond in a meaningful way to the capacity crisis right across our hospital network? Whatever he is doing is just not working. Not only is it not working; it is completely and utterly failing. We need serious action from Government.

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