Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an rún seo ó Shinn Féin.

In fairness to the Minister for Health, I have to hand it to him for managing to deliver an upbeat speech on the current situation in the health service. It takes a phenomenal level of optimism, or maybe disconnection, to give an upbeat speech in that manner. In his response, there was an element of Comical Ali defending the Iraqi war effort while bombs were landing behind him all over Baghdad. What is happening throughout the health service is heartbreaking.

This a record-breaking Government for all the wrong reasons. We have record-breaking numbers of people on trolleys in recent years. Last year, well over 100,000 people were on them. We have had record-breaking waiting times in accident and emergency departments right around the State, with many waiting at least 13 hours to be treated. We know this policy is actually killing people. I use that word advisedly. Often we say lives are lost because of the Government's policies, but lives are not just being lost: decisions are being made that lead to people's deaths. It is estimated that 1,300 people lose their lives annually because of Government-related overcrowding in accident and emergency departments. It is heartbreaking to see this happen. A hundred people per month lose their lives in this country because the Government will not reform the system. It is not for the lack of money because today we also learned that the budget in the health service is 21.5% of all government expenditure. Never before has so little been achieved by a Minister for Health with so much taxpayers' money.

A particular issue on which I want to focus is obviously the wait times for ambulances for people. On 6,200 ambulance call-outs last year, it took more than an hour for the ambulance to respond to life-threatening emergencies. Only in 72% of life-threatening cardiac emergencies were people reached on time. We are learning that response time is actually lengthening by 50%. There are a large number of reasons for this. I want to focus on something that none of the other political parties are focusing on, however, and that is the relationship between the crisis in the ambulance service and the crisis in accident and emergency departments. If the Government keeps closing accident and emergency departments, it will take longer for an ambulance to get to an available accident and emergency department because it will have to travel further. If we keep closing accident and emergency departments, more and more people will be forced into fewer accident and emergency departments. We have ambulances waiting outside accident and emergency departments trying to deposit their patients.

The average turnaround time in Dublin is now 39 minutes. Just before Christmas, there was a phenomenal crisis outside Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda when 11 ambulances were forced to wait to deposit their patients in the accident and emergency department. The Government and HSE turned the hospital car park into an ambulance car park. The paramedics waited for five hours to deposit their patients in the accident and emergency department. As a result of the ambulances being tied up at the hospital, no ambulances were available on the night in question in the whole of counties Cavan, Monaghan, Meath and Louth. As a result, if someone had a heart attack or stroke, it was tough luck, you had it on the wrong date. That was the situation the Government created.

How do we imagine the Government would respond to a car park full of ambulances outside the hospital in Drogheda? Would it be to have ambulances bypass the Navan accident and emergency department? We would imagine the answer to that would be "No" but that is exactly what happened in the immediate aftermath. We now have the incredible situation whereby patients are being picked up in Meath and ambulances are bypassing Navan accident and emergency department and dropped them off in Drogheda. They are triaged in Drogheda and in many cases the consultant decides to send them back to Navan for treatment. The ambulance then has to make a third journey back to Navan to bring the patient for treatment. If an ambulance is not available, the patient must be brought back by taxi but because the patient is ill, a healthcare professional has to travel in the taxi. After dropping the patient off in Navan, the healthcare professional then has to get a taxi back to Drogheda. What would be an emergency involving two journeys becomes one involving four journeys because of the dysfunction of this Government. This is leading to a crisis. I appeal to the Government to stop ambulances bypassing Navan accident and emergency department.

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