Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

From 2002 on, successive Governments have espoused and implemented the downgrading of hospitals and the transfer of acute hospital services to so-called centres of excellence. We all know that that policy has created chaos. It was wrong then and it is wrong now, and it should never have happened. We in south Tipperary were lucky that 15,000 people on the streets stopped the transfer of our services to other areas, but other areas were not as lucky. It is now time to recognise and reverse that policy failure.

The trolley figures are a clear example of the chaos. The human beings on trolleys in accident and emergency departments, on corridors and in wards are a clear example of the chaos, failure and indignity suffered by thousands of patients over the past ten years. The total figure for October is 11,452, which is outrageous. The figures are climbing year on year, and we have not yet entered winter.

One of the areas which has suffered the brunt of the policy about which I am speaking is the mid-west, including Limerick, Clare and north Tipperary, which is part of my constituency. There are knock-on effects on South Tipperary General Hospital. University Hospital Limerick and South Tipperary General Hospital consistently have the highest trolley figures in the country. Today's trolley figures are obscene. Patients are suffering and dying on trolleys in our emergency departments, something the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine has warned us about for the past number of years. Today's figures are the second highest ever recorded.

Mary Harney, the former Minister for Health, declared an emergency when 602 patients were on trolleys. Today, the figure is 679. The particular problems at University Hospital Limerick and in Clare and north Tipperary started with the closure of the accident and emergency departments in Nenagh and Ennis general hospitals. A local campaign held a number of very successful meetings to demand the reopening of the accident and emergency departments in those hospitals.

The chaos resulting from the policy I have described has been compounded by two moratoriums. Everybody in this Chamber, including the Taoiseach, knows they are real.

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