Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

These are not instances. A total of 11,856 patients spent time on trolleys last month. If a person is 75 years of age and is admitted to the accident and emergency department, the average waiting time before he or she is admitted is 13 hours. It is an absolute disgrace; it is a scandal. The Minister talks about facts; I will give him facts. The Government promised beds three years ago; they still have not been delivered. It promised 10,000 members of staff in the health service; last year just above half of that number was delivered. The real facts are that there were 11,856 patients in the month of May on hospital trolleys. This figure is higher than in the depths of winter in January of this year when the number of patients on trolleys broke all the records we had seen before. The Minister is somehow normalising that, just as he has normalised homelessness. It is not acceptable. Whether it is our mother or grandmother, we should never tolerate the fact that a woman was left in hospital suffering from cardiac problems for 24 hours on a chair and not even given a bed. The point I make is that the Government has no plan. Sinn Féin put forward its plan. Deputy Cullinane has outlined our plan. We have showed in our alternative budget what we would do in terms of workforce planning and additional capacity. Not one additional acute bed did the Government provide for in the two most recent budgets. The reason we have record numbers on trolleys is the Government's inability to deal with this crisis; it is just making it worse.

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