Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

In recent days, I spoke to the family of an elderly man who went to a GP with a respiratory illness. He went to the GP centre to look for an appointment with the doctor and was told to come back in January. Yesterday, I spoke to 79-year-old woman who has an infection. She rang the GP and was told to come back in January. Last night she rang the doctor on call but there was no answer from the doctor on call for the hour and a half she waited on the line. Today, she has spent all day in bed because there is nothing else she can do. Last week I spoke to someone in Ballivor who had rung the north-east doctor on call service, which is regularly not staffed because of the current unavailability of doctors. She was told to go to Castleblayney, 89 km away in heavy fog if she wanted to get to a doctor on call.

Last Thursday night the paediatric emergency department in Drogheda hospital advised parents and children that it was so stuffed that they needed to wait in their cars. Some of those children had to go to sleep while waiting for the emergency department in their cars on that really cold night. On the previous Saturday, Drogheda emergency department became a long-term car park for 11 ambulances which waited for five hours to deposit their patients there because no bed, chair or trolley was available for them in that emergency department.

In our region we have a major crisis with emergency department capacity. Because of those ambulances being tied up, no ambulances were available in counties Cavan and Monaghan for an extended period on that night. In a general sense, November has been the worst month on record with 100,000 people waiting on trolleys so far this year which leads to death. There is a clear correlation between at long-term waiting in emergency departments and delayed diagnosis, delayed treatments and deaths. It is estimated that 360 people are dying in the State owing to their waiting times in emergency departments.

Workers are leaving the sector. The pressure put on workers' shoulders is forcing them to leave the sector. It is a vicious circle because it means that those who are left have a worse time in the working conditions and are therefore more likely to leave. We know there are 700 missing consultants within the health system and 897,000 people on hospital waiting lists and there were 105,000 adverse incidents in the HSE last year. These are people who have been damaged, made ill and, in some cases, made disabled or lost their lives due to adverse incidents within the HSE. In five years, €2 billion has been spent on people taking cases for negligence claims. This is a significant problem. Not all of it is the responsibility of this current regime and not all of it is the direct responsibility of the Minister. There is a cumulative effect here. A significant cause of the problem was the cutbacks after the crash in 2008 to 2010 that significantly corroded the level of resources in the hospital system.

Approximately 600 medically discharged patients are in hospitals today. These are patients who are fit to leave hospital to go on to a step-down facility or to go home and have a carer look after them. However, because they are not available, they are stuck in the hospitals. I recently submitted a parliamentary question to find out how much the State is paying per hour for these carers and the reply indicated that on average carers are getting €27 per hour from the State. Based on an Internet search, the average wage for a carer is €12.95, which is less than half that amount. I have to ask the Minister whether the system is working properly.

I have spoken to him in depth about this. There is a particular crisis in County Meath at the moment, which has now rippled out to affect the whole region. As a result, on Monday there were protests in Navan, Drogheda, Cavan, Mullingar, Ennis, Limerick and Nenagh. We have the development of a national hospital campaign trying to raise the profile of what is happening in the health service due to this particular crisis. Without proper investment and unless a halt is called to HSE management, which is proceeding with its plans to reduce capacity in what is a capacity crisis, the system will get worse. The only way to increase capacity is to invest properly in the hospitals that can look after patients in emergency departments. That means more consultant cover in hospitals such as Navan. A sum of €10 million a year will provide the consultant cover necessary in places like Navan to be able to provide proper safe emergency department cover in that area. That is all it would cost.

I believe the HSE is becoming more isolated with 17 consultants in Drogheda signing a letter saying that the HSE actions are threats to health. Four consultants in Mullingar signed a letter to say the same. Hundreds of doctors, nurses and medics in Meath have signed a petition calling on the Government to stop the process of closing down Navan emergency department. The HSE management is becoming more isolated. I urge the Minister to stand up to those managers within the HSE to stop them in their tracks and protect the health service where it counts.

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