Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On Friday, the Taoiseach visited University Hospital Limerick, UHL, and met with staff and some hospital campaigners. I welcome this as I have been calling for such a visit for a long time. I hope the Taoiseach saw the unsanitised version of the problems faced by patients and staff there. That was on Friday. In the past two days there have been 205 people on trolleys. The total number of people on trolleys in the hospital to date this year is 1,140, which is much higher than last year. In all of 2022, we had 18,012 people lingering on trolleys. This was the highest toll ever recorded in any hospital. The declaration of a major internal incident following the crisis at Christmas had an impact, but once that was stood down, the numbers, as expected, shot right back up.

There should be nobody on a trolley. There should be sufficient capacity for all patients. In that context, the construction of the three new units needs to proceed with the utmost speed. This is one critical aspect of the solution. The other is the recruitment and retention of new staff and the retention of the existing medical staff. Can the Taoiseach outline the efforts being made for immediate improvements in the context of treatment of patients at UHL and the longer term plans to alleviate the pressures at our local hospital?

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