Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that the clock was stopped. Let me put this in context. Yesterday, I praised the Minister for his efforts with regard to the consultant contracts and other matters. Today, I am not inclined to praise him because I have listened to and read his speech. I know it is no longer politically correct to say that you would sell oil to a certain group of people but he certainly would sell oil to a certain group that produces oil with what he has set out here in his four pages. He has given no context whatsoever. I advise Deputy Durkan that the daily numbers of people waiting for beds on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week have been among the highest so far this year. On Tuesday, 21 March, the number was the third highest. Of that 665 people waiting for a bed, 56 were in Galway. As Dr. Hickey of Sligo University Hospital has not only told us, but continuously tells us, more than 300 people, at the very least, die every year as a direct result of the time they spent on trolleys.

On 17 February, the INMO sanctioned a campaign of industrial action in pursuance of safe staffing levels and that process is ongoing. Staffing levels in our hospitals are not safe. On top of that, one third of nursing posts in St. James's Hospital are unfilled because nurses cannot afford to live in Dublin any more. That is only an example; this is repeated in lots of other places, particularly in Dublin and Galway. We have extraordinary waiting lists. If I may be parochial, I will refer to Galway, first in the context of safety. Back in 2021, a HIQA report told us that the situation in Galway was an accident waiting to happen. It warned the hospital of a series of breaches of law, including at its temporary emergency department. As the Minister of State well knows, we now have another emergency department, which cost €60 million. I welcome that. I was there myself, although not for me personally, but for somebody close to me, and I can only praise it. I can only praise the staff for their extraordinary fortitude - to use Deputy Durkan's word - in persisting in a situation that is unsafe and downright dangerous. The low morale of the staff is a result of the conditions they have had to work with, the failure of the HSE to retain staff, the Department of Health's policies and so on. We are never going to change this system if we persist with a narrative that this problem exists because we speak out on it. That is utterly unacceptable.

I will refer to the waiting list for orthopaedic treatment in Galway. It should be remembered that two theatres were closed in Galway over two or three years. The delay was inexplicable and the orthopaedic list went out of all proportion. A total of 7,092 adults and 1,438 children have been waiting on that list for more than 18 months. They are the damning statistics I could go on to cover.

The spending review carried out only recently, in 2022, gave an overview of hospital performance for the years 2017 to 2021. The emergency department waiting time performance was persistent across years. They are the types of statistics I am looking at. I then ask how this happened.

This happened, just like the housing crisis, as a direct result of Government policies and the privatisation and commodification of our health service.

In 2010, almost 13 years ago, the World Health Organization raised a red alert with regard to retention problems. It specifically asked for countries to zone in on the problems with retaining nurses and medical professionals because we were relying on workers from other countries coming here and depriving their home countries of their services as a result.

I refer to the situation in respect of medical students. According to an article in The Irish Times, almost half of all medical students, who pay on average €56,000 in college fees, move away after graduating. Irish graduates are moving away. One survey in Sligo found that of 77 medical students who graduated from UCC in 2021, 62 are working in Australia.

What is happening with our public health service? We have privatised and commodified it, while financing a private system. We have failed to learn from Covid. We have failed to have safe infection policies in Galway. I received an email about the level of Covid in Galway. I understand that Covid is endemic, but there are no single rooms in the hospital in Galway. According to the emails I am getting in relation to people suffering from Covid, infecting others with it or contracting it in the hospital, we seem to have learned very little.

There is still no timeline for the planning application relating to the accident and emergency department in Galway. It would have been quicker to go ahead with the brand new hospital in Merlin Park, which was the choice made in the context of the options appraisal. That was changed two years later in order to keep developing the hospital in Galway out of all proportion. There are many other issues.

The Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, is in the right place when it comes to the health service. She will be familiar with many of the matters to which I refer. They did not happen by accident; they did not happen overnight. They happened as a direct result of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil policies over a long period that put an emphasis on private medicine.

I praised the Minister last night regarding the new contracts with the consultants, which have not been finalised. It is most ironic that at the time when we move to make public hospitals for public patients, we are, by stealth, privatising primary care centres. Galway will have a primary care centre funded completely by two private companies. The HSE will lease these back, and we cannot be given any details of what will be involved. As for why that is the case, we are told it is a commercially sensitive matter, etc. That is ironic.

See this speech in context