Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

In its first ever inspection of hospital overcrowding, the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, found that there was a risk of a grossly overcrowded emergency department in University Hospital Limerick. It found that one of the patients was waiting on a trolley for five days and that people were travelling from the mid-west to Dublin to access accident and emergency departments. Emergency departments have record levels of waiting times, with most people waiting for roughly 13 hours. Older people are waiting 19 hours for admission into accident and emergency departments. Patients in Tallaght University Hospital are waiting 24 and a half hours for admission and there were 8,600 people on trolleys in May. The Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and the Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar have told patients not to come near them because they are under such pressure with overcrowding.

According to the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, up to 350 people are dying annually due to overcrowding in this State.

According to a response I received from the Minister for Health to a parliamentary question, there has been a jump from 79,000 to 105,000 adverse incidents taking place in hospitals across the country. That is a jump of 32% of people who have suffered ill health as a result of mistakes happening in hospitals. Extreme incidents have risen from 373 cases to 579 and include death and incapacity. These are happening because of the massive fact that overcrowding is gripping our hospitals. Why? It is because of the lack of capacity. We have seen the number of hospital beds fall from 20,000 to 14,000 and the number of ICU beds is 200 fewer than even the HSE states there should be.

If one tries to register for a GP in counties like Meath at the moment, one cannot get such a registration for love nor money. If one has a GP, it will take a fortnight to get access to an appointment. So far this year, 400 doctors have emigrated to Australia. The health service is a disaster and a car crash and it is happening under the Minister's watch.

What is the response of the HSE? It states it wants to close Navan accident and emergency and five ICU beds that go with it, and send the 25,000 patients to a queue in nearby hospitals to wait for hours for life and death treatment. One does not have to be Einstein to work out the response to overcrowding is more capacity, not less.

The man in charge of the HSE, Paul Reid, is paid €411,000 per year. The number of people in the HSE paid more than €410,000 has doubled in a short period of time. Now we hear the Government will give a 10% to 15% pay increase to public servants earning this amount of money. Is there no level of productivity related to the amount people get paid? Is there no link between the outcomes of people's work and the amount they get paid in the HSE? How can the Government proceed with pay increases to these civil servants at a time when we have such a crisis in the health service?

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