Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with all of that. The hospitals need to take a zero-tolerance approach to patients on trolleys. We have seen it. For example, Tullamore hospital is a very good case study where a new management team came in, they were on the ground in the emergency department and challenging why this patient and that patient were on trolleys and following that up right through the hospital. They determined, for instance, that a patient was on a trolley because other patients had not been discharged and asked why had those patients not been discharged. They had not been discharged because the short-term transition bed had not been made available in the community and they decided to go out and talk to the providers. They took a zero-tolerance approach. In Tullamore Hospital today, lines of patients on trolleys will not be seen in the emergency department. Three or four years ago, we would have.

I agree that we cannot expect hospitals and community services to do this on their own. We are expanding capacity at an unprecedented level. At the same time, we need the hospitals to take this very proactive challenging zero-tolerance approach to patients on trolleys accepting that they cannot solve all of those problems on their own and that we in the Oireachtas and we in government have to help them with extra capacity.

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