Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Problems with our healthcare system predate this Government. One might expect the Government to be uniquely qualified to deal with it given that it includes three previous Ministers for Health in the Cabinet, along with, of course, the Minister for Health, and yet problems persist and get worse. The people tasked with implementing Sláintecare have resigned. The IMO is balloting for industrial action. Non-consultant hospital doctors and medical scientists are on strike today. Nowhere is the problem more manifest than in University Hospital Limerick, UHL, where overcrowding continues. I welcome that an expert team was sent in there. I called for an independent review. When will this expert team report? To whom will it report? Will its report be published? What are its terms of reference? Will it include looking at whether some of the model 2 hospitals in the region now need to be upgraded to deal with the population in the mid-west?

We need a long-term solution as well as a short-term solution to the particular problems of overcrowding in UHL.

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