Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Not necessarily, a Cheann Comhairle. Emergency surgical services are an issue everywhere. I understand this involves a 17-year-old child. I have a response for the Deputies around the provision of emergency surgical services. However, I will say I have an 18-month-old child who required emergency orthopaedic surgery. We turned up at Crumlin hospital, which is a paediatric centre of excellence, on at Saturday night at 11 p.m. The registrar and surgeons do not come in until 7 a.m. the following morning.

I am not saying it is a solution but I managed to get emergency surgery at 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning. A lot of it is a matter of the rostering of registrars and consultants who can identify and prepare for surgery at whatever time of the day or night.

The Deputies also raise a really important question of the costs of children in hospital. As they have said, they were to go and stay in a bed and breakfast or take two round trips as it will turn out by the time they get back. The cost of petrol is really very significant. It is something I have tried to highlight again and again. I do not mean to sound trite but when people are in a children's hospital, the last thing they are thinking about is costs. Costs, however, are extremely important. The additional needs payment is available to people - I have confirmed that through the Minister, Deputy Humphreys - to be able to recoup some of those very difficult costs, such as bed and breakfast costs, very significant petrol costs, or other childcare costs. Indeed, the family may have had other children who may have been younger. They would have had to leave not once, but twice late at night and they would have had to make sure they got the care that was necessary. I really am very sorry to hear that the matter was not resolved and that the finger was not saved.

The majority of emergency surgical services provided in the area referred to by the Deputies fall under the Saolta University Health Care Group, which serves a population of 830,000 and provides acute and specialist hospital services to the west and north west, including Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Donegal, Roscommon, Leitrim and parts of adjoining counties.

Geography is a major challenge for the group because the population is dispersed and rural, with approximately one sixth of the national population being spread across one third of the land area of the State. The combined budget for the hospitals under the remit has risen from €795 million in 2018 to more than €1 billion in 2023, an increase of more than 35%. Key hospitals in the region providing 24-7 emergency medicine services include Sligo, Galway and Letterkenny. Sligo University Hospital, which is a model 3 hospital, delivers a wide range of local and regional services on an inpatient, day case and outpatient basis, including certain specialities, acute medicine and acute surgery, as well as a number of regional specialities provided on an outreach basis to Letterkenny University Hospital.

In 2023, the budget allocation for the hospital was €175 million, which was up from €130 million in 2018. Between the end of 2020 and December 2022, staff had increased more than 13.6%. Galway University Hospital is a large, busy hospital. As the Deputies will be aware, this Government has allocated significant additional resources to the hospital to meet the needs of the patients. Its staff has increased by 13% since 2020 and the hospital’s budget has increased from €338 million in 2018 to €441.7 million in 2023. Similarly, Letterkenny Hospital’s budget has increased from €131 million in 2018 to €178 million in 2023. Its staff has increased by 18% since 2020.

However, access to high-quality services, including emergency surgical services, is a necessary priority for the Government, as is providing these services as close to home as possible, particularly late at night when emergencies actually happen, as appropriate and in line with Sláintecare. The investment underlines the Government’s commitment to improving services for the people across the north west.

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