Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Accounts of experiences in our hospitals make for very grim reading in today's newspapers. Aaron is the father of a child who spent the weekend in Crumlin children's hospital. He said:

We spent 24 hours with our child in A&E, a child with special needs. The place was like a warzone with the poor staff run off their feet. Our front line can't cope and hospitals are unsafe for patients and staff.

We spoke to Aaron this morning and he wants us to record here that while this was the experience of his family over one weekend, they are very conscious that this is the experience of staff in our hospitals every single day.

The daughter of an 83 year old woman attending University Hospital Limerick said of her mother:

She was soaked, there was urine everywhere. She wasn't on a trolley, she was in the waiting room on the chair. They gave her some kind of pad and told her to sit on that.

The family of a 73 year old man who had been on a trolley for 24 hours said:

We're praying for a bed at this stage. They're trying to fit oxygen bottles to people in the corridors and the staff are just thrown to the wolves.

A 76 year old woman in Limerick said:

It's like a cattle market. There are trolleys everywhere.

The INMO has again stated that the situation is intolerable for staff and unsafe for patients.

These are the words and experiences of patients, relatives and hospital staff. This crisis is not new but is years in the making. Between them, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have created a situation where 660 people are waiting on trolleys across the State, 33 of whom are children. Limerick, once again, has the highest number with 75 patients waiting on trolleys. I was in Cork yesterday and spoke to people in Knocknaheeny, Bishopstown and all across the north side of Cork. They tell stories of people suffering at Cork University Hospital. Today, 60 people are awaiting beds in Cork University Hospital. More generally, as has already been stated, the level of crisis in our hospitals is such that our three main children's hospitals postpone elective procedures. They have no choice. It is the only option they are left with.

What will it take for the Taoiseach to accept and recognise the scale of the crisis facing sick people and their families because people are dying in hospital corridors and children are left in pain due to cancelled operations, which is not acceptable? The truth is that the Government's health policy has failed and this failure is having a devastating impact on the lives of patients but also on staff. Will the Taoiseach listen to the solutions that have been offered to him by nurses, midwives, hospital consultants' associations and patients? Those solutions involve increased recruitment, reopening closed beds and delivery of more step-down facilities but I ask the Taoiseach to specifically intervene on the matter of home help hours, bring provision to a level that will meet need and ensure patients are in a position to be discharged and to go home. I am asking him to give a commitment on this one matter and to at least signal that he will start to put right his disastrous health policy.

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