Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. We have a crisis in our health service, as the motion states. According to the INMO, more than 12,600 people were without beds in Irish hospitals in November. It was the worst November on record for hospital overcrowding, and there were only two days in that month when fewer than 500 people were admitted to hospital without an inpatient bed. For the first time, there was a month in which more than 560 children were admitted without a bed in our hospitals. In my constituency, Tallaght hospital had 35 people on trolleys this morning. Recently, Drogheda hospital had 11 ambulances with patients queueing outside, not only because of a lack of beds but because of a lack of trolleys. More than 27,000 people left the State's emergency departments before being treated during a three-month period this year.

At University Hospital Limerick, 72 doctors recently signed a letter warning of persistent overcrowding and unsafe working conditions putting patients at risk. The letter highlighted several near misses at the hospital's acute medical unit, where doctors say patients almost died due to understaffing and a lack of medical cover. The letter states patients have had to wait more than ten hours for a bed in the unit without any medical attention, while other lost patients are sometimes missed and left unseen by a doctor for days. The doctors have made a protected disclosure detailing their grievances because previous warnings have not been acted on by the hospital and because of a climate of fear of retribution. Such is the state of the country's emergency departments and of our hospitals.

Waiting lists are a chronic problem. Recently, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, IHCA, stated that one in 12 children in the State was on some form of hospital waiting list due to growing hospital staff vacancies and worsening capacity deficits. That is 98,000 children on some form of NTPF waiting list, with more than one in four of them waiting longer than a year for treatment or assessment in public hospitals. It also stated that 21 additional children had been added to waiting lists for scoliosis-related surgery since the start of the year. In September, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, IHCA, stated that waiting lists might increase by more than 20,000 in 2022, instead of the target reduction of 132,000, while the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, has warned that the winter plan has, increasingly, become a media exercise rather than a meaningful intervention to alleviate the year-round pressures on our health service. The president of the IMO has stated, “It’s now more about branding than a meaningful intervention to deal with the capacity issues, workforce crisis and patient waiting lists.” The yawning gap between Government rhetoric and the lived reality of all those people who experience the broken health service has never been wider.

Added to that is the housing crisis, which is also now having a major effect on the health service. The Dáil just voted confidence in the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The consistently failed policies are going to continue, but the consequences are being seen in education and healthcare. The INMO has stated:

The lack of suitable available accommodation and increasing rents is having a hugely negative impact on our ability to retain nurses and midwives not just in Dublin but in other cities and towns where there is significant pressure on the rental market.

Affordable accommodation in close proximity to healthcare settings should not be a pipe dream for nurses and midwives who work long hours.

Many hospitals have land that is suitable for the development of such accommodation. We also need to give serious consideration to accommodation allowances for nurses and midwives working in urban areas to compensate for the high cost of rent and housing in our cities and large towns.

Approximately 200 nurses and midwives have remained absent on sick leave due to long Covid. It is shameful that the special leave with pay scheme was ended. The Minister for Health must ensure the incomes of the workers affected will be protected. The fundamental cause of all this is that there is a two-tier and fragmented health service and a chronic lack of capacity and staffing in emergency departments, acute and elective hospital services, ICU, public health teams, primary care and GP services, mental health, disability services - I could go on and on. We have one of the lowest number of public hospital beds on a population basis and the fewest specialist doctors per capita, both about 40% less than the EU average. Dr. Brian Turner of Cork University Business School has stated that the health service is having to ration care, through long waiting lists and wait times, as a result of serious capacity and resourcing deficits.

Thousands in the health service have still not received the Covid bonus. There is a dramatic underfunding and underinvestment in our public health service, yet this morning the Blackrock Clinic group reported that its income had increased by 21.5% in 2021 and that its profits had doubled. Just like with the housing crisis, a wealthy minority is doing very well. We need to invest properly in our public health service, take the Blackrock Clinic and other private hospitals into public ownership and build a single-tier, public, national health service, free at the point of use and funded by progressive taxation.

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