Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I left the Chamber earlier to check on that. I saw a press release from the organisation stating that planning permission was about to go in. That press release was from 2016. It is now 2020. I obviously forgive management for not progressing the matter over the past few months but it is inexplicable to me. There are 150 acres available in Merlin Park, or at least that is what I thought. I recently heard representatives from Saolta hospital group state that there are 180 acres available. It makes absolute sense to build a brand new hospital. We saw the options appraisal and I attended a meeting in the audiovisual room in and at which it was which suggested that there was very little difference between the time it would take to build a brand new hospital and the time it would take to build a new accident and emergency department. It seemed an utter waste of public money to be going down two parallel roads. I ask for sense to prevail and suggest that the Government looks at building a new public hospital on the grounds of Merlin Park University Hospital where there are 180 acres available.

The working title of this session of the Dáil sitting is emergency department bed capacity. The following are some things that Dr. Fergal Hickey said in May 2019. He told us about structural inefficiency in the health service, including 29 emergency departments for a population of 4.85 million and the employment of agency staff at a cost much greater than that relating to regular staff, particularly when agency staff do not possess the requisite skills. Those were just some of the issues he raised and he was only one of many consultants. He works in Sligo University Hospital. In the case of a person over the age of 75 waiting on a trolley for a period of over 12 hours, this doctor says that there is little chance of that 75 year old returning to pre-admission function level and, therefore, will most likely need long-term care directly as a result of being on a trolley for a particular period. The doctor also said that emergency departments have become warehousing departments for all conditions which is a move away from what the department was supposed to be. He told us that every year, 350 people will die prematurely as a result of overcrowding in accident and emergency departments. Their deaths will be directly related to their time on trolleys. We know all these figures.

Dr. Hickey made another announcement recently to the effect that the health executive is passively allowing a return to the status quo. Dr. Hickey stated:

The concern is that we are seeing a rise in patients on trolleys at a time when there is still very little elective activity happening in the summer. God knows what's going to happen when winter comes. This should be a cause of major concern to the public. To have anybody on a trolley past the point of admitting the patient to hospital is a cause for concern.

Dr. Hickey went on to state that we should have zero tolerance and so on.

Consultants have also called for an urgent response to what is happening in our hospitals akin to the manner in which the Government responded to the Covid-19 crisis. One of the advantages of speaking at the end is that I have listened to the entire debate. I am afraid that I am not filled with hope. In fact, I am more convinced than ever that the Government is going down the road of further privatisation by buying more space in private hospitals through the National Treatment Purchase Fund as opposed to putting the necessary beds into hospitals. That number of beds is approximately 2,500. We should be filling posts, employing doctors and nurses, and improving their conditions. It might take a little longer than I want for that to happen but I do not see any evidence that it is happening at all. There is absolutely none. Instead, I see a commitment to privatisation. I ask the Minister to tell me I am wrong. I will give him a chance to tell me that.

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