Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to concentrate my remarks on front-line staff and their situation in terms of burnout and stress. Front-line staff are at burnout and cannot continue to work overtime in understaffed conditions. This is not safe or fair to the staff or the patients they care for. Trolleys line the corridors and there is not enough staff to look after patients. Staff are being moved from one area to another. I welcome that extra capacity has been provided, as in the case of Mayo, in terms of the stepping down of patients from Mayo University Hospital to the Sacred Heart home, but extra staff are also needed and nobody seems to understand that.

There is also an issue around communication with staff. Decisions are being made without staff being consulted. We do not need reports and expertise to know of the issues in our health services. We need only to listen to the front-line staff. We need to listen to nurses and the health care assistants who are on the wards coping with the people coming in and out of the hospitals. Unless managers listen to the front-line staff, I fear for what is going to happen this winter.

It is only 1 October and in Mayo there are already trolleys lining the hospital corridors. There will be many more trolleys lining those corridors and not enough staff even to look after patients in the corridors. This is a serious situation. Staff tell me that every night they go into work they do not know where they are going, who will be left with them or where they are going to be. Emergency meetings are happening without them. They are being treated like pawns on a chessboard in terms of trying to deal with a really serious situation. We want people to live with Covid, we do not people to die from it. Many nurses are in fear of losing their registration because of the stress that they are under and the mistakes that they may make. The message that I want to go out from this debate is that we need to listen to the staff. They have the answers and they are willing to work. They are already working very, hard and I thank them for the work they are doing.

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