Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Christmas may be coming and the geese may be getting fat, but so are the numbers relating to delayed discharges, the trolley crisis and the bed crisis in our hospitals. Like Deputy O'Rourke, I wish to focus on the home care supports that would go some way towards alleviating the growing problems with delayed discharges. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Louth has 14,941 lost bed days, the second highest number in the country outside of Dublin. These lost bed days mean that there were people who were eligible to be discharged from hospital but they did not have access to appropriate step-down facilities. The almost 15,000 bed days lost to delays are outrageous. The simple fact is that there was nowhere else for those people to go. A total of 296 people over the age of 75 years spent more than 24 hours on trolleys or chairs in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital since the beginning of this year.

Overcrowding, cramped wards and the trolley crisis will continue unless urgent funding is provided for step-down facilities, home care packages and creating a speedier fair deal process. I am dealing with a number of cases where a person is in a hospital and the family is awaiting finalisation of the fair deal. They can be waiting up to 12 weeks for the process to be completed. Surely the person could be given a cheaper facility in a nursing home in the meantime while the decision is made on the fair deal.

The issuing of crisis medical cards is taking seven to eight weeks. With urgent cancer cases there should be a mechanism whereby somebody who has a serious diagnosis could have a consultant sign a form and be urgently provided with a medical card, rather than it taking six to eight weeks to happen.

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