Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As a nation we have done very well in dealing with the Covid-19 to date, primarily due to the huge sacrifice made by our people but I do not take from the crucial role the Minister has played in this regard. We will have a very difficult time ahead as we look to what will happen next winter. As the Minister knows, our hospital sector is set up in clusters. In the mid-west, the area I know best, we have University Hospital Limerick in Dooradoyle, which is a tier 4 hospital that takes acute patients. We also have hospitals in Ennis and Nenagh and St. John's Hospital, which are tier 2 hospitals. All Covid patients in the area who require hospitalisation are sent to University Hospital Limerick, which places a huge burden on that hospital as it does in all such hospitals. There is almost segregation in the accident and emergency unit between Covid patients and non-Covid patients. Obviously, the two cannot come into contact with one another. If we have patients in corridors there is almost an inevitability of cross-infection and that people who go to hospital with a broken hip, such as an elderly person who has fallen, will come into contact with Covid, which could have disastrous repercussions for them and the broader community if they go back to it. There are huge challenges lying ahead.

University Hospital Limerick has been consistently the most overcrowded hospital in the State. We are not second-class people in the mid-west. One hundred years after the foundation of the State we deserve a decent healthcare system. Today, in the middle of summer, 35 patients are on trolleys in Limerick. I bring this to the Minister's attention now because I can only imagine what lies ahead for me, my family, my neighbours, the people I represent, and, most of all, the patients in the hospital and the doctors and nurses who have to work in those conditions.

We know that only people who need acute care should go to University Hospital Limerick and all others should be treated in the tier 2 hospitals. This is what we were promised when the structure was set up but it is not what has happened to date. I am not here to apportion blame for the past and for what has not happened up to now.

This desperately needs to happen now. In the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response, the representative of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, IHCA, was sitting exactly where the Minister is sitting now and he said it was not because hospital consultants were not prepared to provide care and outpatient services in Nenagh, Limerick and St. John's. What is now planned to make sure that only those who need to go to Limerick go to Limerick, and those who can be treated in the other hospitals are treated in them? That will involve a huge escalation in the capability of Ennis to deal with the local injuries unit and the medical assessment unit as well as outpatient facilities so that we do not have the overcrowding that looks almost inevitable now. It is like looking at a car crash from six months away.

There is a minute and a half left and I urge the Minister to provide some succour to the people of Clare.

See this speech in context