Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise with the Taoiseach the serious crisis in University Hospital Kerry, UHK. Three weeks ago, eight senior consultants at University Hospital Kerry wrote to general practitioners and elected members stating: "Our hospital is in crisis since the second week of September." The letter went on to state that elective surgery has been cancelled, there are high numbers of patients on trolleys in the emergency department, there are staff shortages and staff burn-out, that no surgical day ward is operating and that the acute medical assessment unit is closed more often than it is open.

There are 2,300 people on waiting lists for elective surgery, many of them in pain. Elective surgery has been cancelled. Elderly people up to 90 years of age are on trolleys in corridors for two or three days as they wait for a bed. That is not right. A respectable senior citizen who operated a highly respectable business in Killarney for many years died on a trolley in Tralee hospital. UHK needs 100 additional nurses. We need an independent assessment and external review to identify what has gone wrong in order that we can rectify the situation. I am told that senior decision-makers and on-call management rotas are practically non-existent at weekends, that elderly people are being sent home in ambulances without a homecare plan in place, with many of those who can walk being sent home in taxis, that ambulances are queuing for three to four hours waiting to unload at the accident and emergency department and that ambulances assigned to Kerry, which operate on a 12-hour shift basis, are being redeployed at the start of a shift to areas in Cork and as far away as Dungarvan and that they often complete that shift in Clonmel, leaving Kerry unserviced during that entire shift. Reconfiguration of the ambulance service in 2012 has resulted in a reduction of service in Kerry. Staff are exhausted, mentally and physically. Last month, there were 422 patients on trolleys while four years ago, there were only 114 people on trolleys. The week before last there were 84 people on trolleys.

Never before has a crisis of the dimensions I have set out existed in Kerry. I ask the Taoiseach to deal with this matter urgently.

See this speech in context