Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Earlier the HSE published its winter plan in an attempt to tackle overcrowding and deal with faster patient discharges. We are at the point where every day is winter in our hospitals because of overcrowding, patients on trolleys and undervalued staff trying their best on the front line. That is the state of the health service every day of the year. Patients face another difficult winter in already difficult circumstances and I have serious doubts whether this winter plan will be able to tackle the issues at the heart of the system that blight the health service. As the general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, stated yesterday, it will be impossible to staff more in the middle of the recruitment freeze the Government introduced in May of this year. The Government cannot staff additional beds without additional staff. It is as simple as that. The recruitment freeze is crippling emergency departments and patients are suffering as a result. Nurses regularly report that inadequate staff levels are dangerous for patients in the hospitals. The front page of a newspaper today stating that the lives of newborns are at risk from overcrowding in the Rotunda Hospital. That is how bad the situation has got.

The stupidity of the recruitment freeze is laid bare in Portiuncula Hospital Ballinasloe. Where public health services once had six nurses, they now have four vacancies which cannot be filled because of the recruitment freeze. Staff have warned the Government that these services, which provide care to the community and inpatients in their homes, face closure this month unless these vacancies are filled. This closure would prevent hospital discharges and increase admissions to hospitals. This is while the Government's new winter plan seeks to reduce overcrowding and increase discharges. It does not make sense. That is only a snapshot of the Government's reckless mismanagement of the health services. According to the latest HSE figures, there are 308 fewer staff nurses and 37 fewer public health nurses now compared to this time last year. In August, 1,300 nursing and midwifery posts were vacant and unfilled. The UK's national statistics institute for health found that when staffing levels fall the risk of death on wards increases.

Besides inadequate staffing levels, we now have a situation where this year alone more than 100,000 patients have been admitted to hospitals that did not have a bed available. What does all this mean for communities? In Limerick University Hospital, almost 12,000 patients have gone without a bed. As my colleague, Deputy Quinlivan, stated only two weeks ago, the crisis has been going on in Limerick for some years now and the Government has done nothing to address it. In Cork University Hospital, CUH 9,500 patients have gone without a bed so far this year.

The human impact is clear to see and it was laid bear last week after Mrs. Evelyn Crowley tragically died on the corridors of CUH. That hospital currently has 16 vacancies and the Tánaiste will stand and tell me that there is no recruitment freeze.

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