Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I was very pleased to visit UHL last week. It was the third or fourth time I visited the hospital, and the third time I had visited the accident and emergency department. I was in the old one and in the new one when it opened. I was there again the other day. It really is a very good and modern department. It has some equipment and facilities that just do not exist in other parts of the country, like CT facilities on site, for example, as well as 11 consultants, which is a huge number. It is horribly overcrowded, however. I am sure it is much more overcrowded when I am not visiting. It was overcrowded when I was there, however. The hospital cannot function the way it should function because patients are forced to wait on trolleys for admission. We must do everything we can to change this situation.

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