Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not have enough time to do justice to these issues, but I am grateful to my colleagues for raising them. The large number of speakers on this side of the House demonstrates the scale of the crisis. As my colleague, Deputy Rabbitte, said, University Hospital Galway is a disaster. The latest dream is that we are going to get a brand new hospital. I would love to have a new hospital in Merlin Park, but in the meantime we must solve the problems there now. We want no reneging on the commitment to Newcastle Road in respect of the emergency department that we have been repeatedly promised since 2011, although it is no further forward since then.

There are many issues we could discuss. One of the extraordinary ones was the fact that after training nurses in Galway, UHG did not offer them contracts. They can be taken back on a contract but they are not getting permanent jobs in the hospital. We are constantly being told that there are not enough nurses to take up the jobs. That was an extraordinary decision. When I ask the Minister about the policy on this or something else, I get an answer from the HSE. It appears that the Minister and the Department do not have any overriding policy. I always thought that the idea behind a semi-State agency was that it implements Government policy, but time and again this Government tells us that it does not have a policy and that the agency has the policy. Most of those policies are negative.

One of the problems with getting into hospital is that the hospitals are critically short of beds. The other problem is that people cannot get into the hospital because people cannot get out of it. They are waiting for the fair deal. It is an enormously costly wait because every week costs almost €1,000. If a person is waiting 12 or 14 weeks between the assessments and the approval being given financially, it is a huge amount of money. Another problem is the critical shortage of home care. If people being discharged require a high level of care, it is not possible to facilitate them.

5 o’clock

We could be here all evening on this but I hope the Minister of State gets the message. We are in a crisis and it is only the beginning of winter. I hate to think what faces us over this winter, particularly if there is a flu outbreak.

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