Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am acutely aware of the scale of the challenge facing our emergency departments across the country this winter and the extra demands Covid is placing on them. Our front-line staff are exhausted from 20 months of dealing with Covid yet continue to deliver a high standard of care to all. I wish to thank them and acknowledge the distress that overcrowded emergency departments cause to patients, their families and the incredible front-line staff who have to work in those difficult conditions.

UHL of course has one of the busiest emergency departments in the country and more than 63,000 individuals have attended so far this year. Increased attendances and Covid-19-related patient safety protocols are contributing to slower progress of patients through the system, and this impacts on waiting times and patient experience in the emergency department. However, despite an increase in attendances of 7% up to October of this year compared with the same period in 2019, the number of patients on trolleys is 35% lower. That is despite an increase in patients and all the additional pressures of Covid-19. Huge thanks and acknowledgement goes to our frontline healthcare workers right across the system, including those in acute, primary and community care, for putting in so much effort to make that possible.

I published the HSE winter plan on 15 November. The Government already allocated an additional €1.1 billion in additional funding to support health services and this is being maintained into next year. The winter plan is designed around a whole-system approach involving acute hospitals and the community and primary care sectors. It has three key objectives: emergency department avoidance; patient flow; and hospital egress. It is aligned with the Sláintecare principle of "Right Care, Right Place, Right Time". Specific measures for UHL include an extension of the National Ambulance Service pathfinder initiative and paediatric patient flow initiatives to ensure timely discharges.

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