Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I will try to encapsulate the state of the health service in a number of figures. Last year, 115,000 patients left emergency departments before they were seen. That is an incredible figure. Some 115,000 people were sick enough to warrant going to the emergency department but were forced to wait so long that after a while they felt they were safer and better off at home. The emergency department in Our Lady's Hospital in Navan was so busy last year that 1,230 patients left the emergency department before they were seen. That is an incredible figure for a hospital whose emergency department the Government is seeking to close.

Statistics that were given to Aontú also reveal that two people in the south-west region were left waiting for longer than 13 hours for ambulances last year. One person in the western region was left waiting 22 hours for an ambulance. That is according to the figures in a reply we received to a parliamentary question. The definition of an ambulance is a vehicle equipped to bring sick or injured people to hospital in an emergency. However, 22 hours is not a figure I would associate with an emergency response. The average response time for ambulances has been increasing year on year since 2019, as has the number of times patients have died by the time the ambulance reached them. In 2019, 757 people were dead by the time an ambulance arrived. In 2021, the figure was 927. That is both startling and devastating. It is a life-and-death indicator of the performance of the emergency services on the Government's watch. Last year, in the context of 103,000 ambulance journeys, or 34% of call-outs, the wait time increased to more than an hour for the handover of patients at hospitals. This means that they were tied up because of a lack of beds in emergency departments. As a result, their ability to get back on the road and help people who were in serious need was also messed up as a result. We had scenes of total chaos at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda a few months ago as 11 ambulances were stuck waiting for five hours as a result of the lack of beds. Yet, the Government is seeking to close the emergency department in the closest hospital in Navan. The ambulances being tied up in Drogheda meant that no ambulances were available in Meath, Louth, Cavan or Monaghan that night. None. They were all stuck in a car park outside the emergency department in Drogheda.

Some 830,000 people are waiting to be seen at outpatient clinics or for hospital treatment at present. That is an incredible figure. Before Christmas, Aontú found out that 600 patients who had been clinically discharged were in hospitals. In other words, the doctor could do no more for the patient but they had nowhere to go. That is an incredible situation. Some 47 people who have been clinically discharged are currently stuck in hospital for more than six months. We found out that in 2021 there were 105,000 adverse incidents in the healthcare system, which was a significant jump on previous years. These are cases of people being damaged, made ill or disabled as a result of mistakes in the health system. This has led to €2 billion of medical negligence payments being made by the State in five years. That money should have gone into front-line resources, but it did not. These figures are shocking. Behind each of them is a human cost. There is suffering and pain, people cannot work due to ill health and people are dependent on carers because of ill health. These are heartbreaking situations for all of those involved. As part of the national hospital campaign, we have been fighting to ensure that the Government invests in hospitals and that it will continue to do so.

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