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

The Minister of State read the same thing he read to me before. The 96-bed unit to which he referred has been talked about for a number of years. There is no update on that, apart from what he said. We are all well aware of the project. It will not alleviate the current problem.

The 60-bed modular unit is very welcome, but it will be more than a year before it can be used by patients. What immediate action will the Government take? That has not been addressed. What will it do for the 81 people who are on trolleys today? There will probably be a similar number on trolleys tomorrow and every other day in October. I hope that is not the case, but it seems likely.

I hope the Minister of State will pass on my concerns to the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, as he stated he would. The Minister should come to the House to apologise to the people of Limerick and the thousands of patients who suffered on a trolley in the past year. This year, there will be a record number of patients on trolleys. The 2018 levels have already been exceeded. The Minister should also apologise to the nurses and other hospital staff who daily run up and down corridors apologising to patients for the way they are treated in emergency departments. It should not be the role of hospital staff, who deliver the best care they can, to apologise to people. Rather, the Government should do so. The Minister should be in the Chamber to address this issue, as I have requested on several occasions, and to apologise to the people of Limerick. I hope he will take that step.

I do not know what are the plans of the Government. I have not heard anything about extra funding for step-down facilities, homecare packages or immediate access. The Minister of State referred to the modular unit. As I pointed out, it will not be ready for a year, while the 96-bed unit is so far into the stratosphere that we will probably never see it being built. It was supposed to be constructed several years ago but it was not delivered.

I believe the Government has no interest in the hospital. Fianna Fáil decided to merge the three hospitals in the mid-west region in spite of being told that these problems would arise. In fairness, nobody expected the scale of the increase in admissions to the hospital, but that is what happened and the Government has not intervened. Ministerial intervention is needed on this issue. If the Minister is not up to it, he should go.

See this speech in context