Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I would like to start with a question about queuing in emergency departments. The acute hospitals emptied during the pandemic. There was a determined effort to make space available in case of a surge, the discharge of patients into long-term residential care was encouraged and funded and meanwhile patients were not admitted because they were not presenting for fear of catching coronavirus.

That has changed. It is now reported that nine acute hospitals in Ireland are full, including St. Vincent's University Hospital. When the acute hospitals fill up, queuing starts to happen in the emergency departments. This is a situation we are used to. It is a bad situation but it is the normal one. There is a particular problem at the moment, however. We are telling people that when they are out shopping or pursuing leisure activities they need to socially distance and follow various practices. It is absolutely unacceptable to tell people who are immunocompromised or very sick that they should be piled up together in a corridor, waiting for admission to the acute hospital. The question that the emergency doctors will ask is this. Once they have finished treating the patients, why are they still kept in the emergency department rather than in some part of the acute hospital as the emergency doctors would prefer? I am sure the people running the acute hospital have a different perspective.

We need to do something to change this arrangement whereby people are physically lined up in a corridor while waiting to enter the acute hospital. Is it possible to set up a temporary ward or some sort of admission lounge in the acute hospital as an adjunct to the emergency department, so that patients are not left in a risky and dangerous situation where infection control cannot be managed?

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