Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Under this Government, UHL has broken yet another record. There were 130 people on trolleys there yesterday, the highest number in the history of the State. That will be the legacy of the Minister for Health and Colette Callan, as CEO of the UL Hospitals Group. The people of the mid-west are dying at the feet of the Government and nothing is being done.

Since 19 September, there have been more than 100 patients on trolleys in UHL every single day. There are 62 more patients on trolleys in the one hospital covering Clare, Limerick and north Tipperary than the three hospitals in County Cork combined. That is interesting.

The Minister for Health has lost the confidence of the staff in UHL and student doctors and nurses who cannot get their hands on visas to get to Australia quick enough. He has, quite rightly, lost the confidence of my constituents who have been abandoned and left to die by the Government. In this House, I have begged the Minister to take action and reinstate Ennis accident and emergency department. I am now demanding that he heeds my calls and those of the INMO and directs the HSE to outsource all elective procedures due to take place at UHL for the foreseeable future to private hospitals, in view of the potential for a high-risk event due to severe overcrowding and a surge in infection, and we are only in October.

Every single day that the Government sits on its hands and refuses to take significant action at UHL, the Minister for Health, the Taoiseach and their Government colleagues have blood on their hands. The blood of my constituents, who have been left to die without dignity in corridors, who have been sent home from an overcrowded accident and emergency department with suicidal ideation, or who timed out before the ambulance even reached them in rural Clare, is on their hands. If it was the Minister of State's mother, father or child, is there any stone she would leave unturned? We were promised a centre of excellence, but now we have a centre of chaos.

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