Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start by acknowledging the enormous distress the overcrowded emergency departments are causing, first of all to patients and their families and second to our healthcare workers. I am regularly in emergency departments meeting with patients and their families and our healthcare workers.

Part of the answer to the question lies in the discussion Deputy Cullinane and I just had. One of the things we must do is move to a seven-day service. We are all aware of the pattern in that the hospital gets cleared on Friday and, therefore, beds become available. The best day, if you like, in a hospital is Saturday morning because the emergency department has beds to send patients up the house to. It then fills up on Saturday, Sunday and Monday again and we have this weekly pattern. To be honest, for those working in hospitals in emergency medicine as well as the patients, it is an exhausting pattern. When I met the emergency department leads around the country in the last two weeks, there was strong support from them to say that yes, the emergency teams need to be there, but they need the support of the hospitals and community groups.

The answer lies in doing two things at the same time. An unprecedented level of investment in workforce and infrastructure is required while, at the same time, we move to this new way of working. I will give the Deputy an example. I was in University Hospital Galway last Friday. That hospital's emergency department regularly deals with difficult situations. I was there on a Friday, when it should have been easier but there were patients on trolleys going up both sides of the main corridor. The conversation I had with the team in Galway was to say the Government is going to invest in more beds, a regional cancer centre, a new emergency maternity and paediatrics block, new laboratories and an elective hospital and outpatients department in Merlin Park. We are going to do all of this but it will only work if the hospital and community service also start working in a different way and move to the seven day per week patient care.

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