Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta Cullinane as ucht an rún seo a chur os comhair na Dála anocht. I had to double-check these figures, but last month, 1,108 patients at Letterkenny University Hospital, LUH, languished on hospital trolleys without beds. That is a disgrace. It is the third most overcrowded hospital in the State, and the situation is getting worse by the week. When Fine Gael took office back in 2011, there were 81 patients without access to LUH that November. In November 2022, there were 1,108. That is a disgraceful figure and shows just how out of control the health service has become under both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. This level of overcrowding is dangerous not only for staff but also for patients. Yesterday, LUH announced it was cancelling elective surgery due to pressure on bed availability. Patients, nurses and hospital staff deserve better. On a local radio station we heard a mother, Tanya, speak about her son, Oisín, who has cerebral palsy. He waited for 32 hours in the hospital without getting a bed. Eventually, Tanya was so tired and distressed at seeing her son in that situation that she took him home, only to be told later that he had pneumonia. She did not risk going back to that hospital, because it was over capacity and under serious stress. She only had praise for the doctors and nurses in the hospital, who are run off their feet. Tanya and Oisín's story is all too familiar to us in County Donegal and elsewhere.

The overcrowding has created conditions that have caused a recruitment and retention crisis to deepen. This vicious cycle needs to be addressed. The housing failure of the Government has now seeped into every corner of our public services, including our hospitals. A recent survey published by the INMO found that two out of three nursing graduates are considering emigrating. Our nurses deserve better than that. They deserve to be able to look forward to safe working conditions and an affordable place to live. The reality is that there are issues with recruitment and retention not only in Dublin, but also in rural parts of County Donegal. We talked earlier about how the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is failing. Let me say this again. There were 1,100 people waiting for a bed in LUH last month. That is a failure by any stretch of the imagination. The Minister needs to get his act together on behalf people like Tanya and Oisín who had to go home after waiting 32 hours in a hospital because they could not even get a bed.

See this speech in context