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

The issue is not simply that accident and emergency departments are busy. To write this off as some kind of temporary busyness is, frankly, off the wall. Conditions are unsafe for patients and staff. This is not a new issue that is the result of any specific outbreak of a particular virus. This is a year-round, calendar-wide catastrophe for patients and their families such that many people are afraid to go into our hospitals. Being left on a trolley in undignified and degrading conditions and sitting on a chair in an accident and emergency department if one is lucky is the daily reality. As for the Government's capacity to deliver solutions, God help us if that is the Taoiseach's idea of coming up with solutions. All the Government has done is to make gestures in the direction of what needs to happen.

The Taoiseach trumpets the additional 1 million home help hours when he knows that is not nearly sufficient. Just to clear the backlog, the waiting list, we need 2.5 million additional home help hours. How about the Government does things that have a prospect of success and actually allow people to go home?

The failure to make the adequate allocation of home help hours has meant, for example, that in May of this year, almost 20,000 bed days were lost because of delayed discharges.

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