Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Everyone knows someone who is waiting on an operation, is in therapy or is unable to get a much-needed appointment. We all know our health service is not working. It is plagued by overcrowding, which is putting patients at risk and condemns our healthcare staff to working conditions that they simply should not have to put up with. The crisis has been brewing for some time and has gotten so bad that patients and their families have almost come to accept that it is normal. It is not acceptable and it is not normal. The people of my constituency in Donegal cannot trust Fine Gael with our health service. On Monday, 66 people were waiting for a bed at Letterkenny University Hospital, which was the highest number in the State. Last year, more than 7,000 patients went without a bed at Letterkenny University Hospital. It was the worst year for overcrowding on record and more than a tenfold increase since Fine Gael took office.

The people of Donegal deserve so much better but the decisions of successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have caused this crisis and made it worse. Two weeks ago, the chief executive of the Saolta Hospital Group, which includes Letterkenny University Hospital, said it had not received a single additional bed in the past three years. These failures are repeated throughout the State. There are fewer hospital beds now than there were 20 years ago, despite population growth and the economic growth that this Government so often brags about but is so clearly squandered.

The failure of this Government cannot be allowed to breed cynicism in our health service so it is condemned to failure. The situation can improve because there are solutions there. We need to make greater use of all public and private healthcare infrastructure to alleviate the pressures. We need to increase the number of public beds and speed up admissions and discharges. We need to ramp up the number of training places to ensure we recruit and retain the required number of healthcare staff. A long-term workforce development plan is needed urgently. This can be done but the truth is that successive Governments have failed our health service for far too long. Sinn Féin has a plan, put forward by our health spokesperson, Deputy Cullinane, that would address the crisis in our hospitals, would put patients first and would show that we can turn the tide on the disastrous policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I call on this Dáil to support the motion put forward by Deputy Cullinane.

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