Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The recruitment ban puts the lives of patients at risk. That is as simply as I can put it. The embargo on recruitment makes the job of our dedicated healthcare professionals more difficult and more stressful, as if working in the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick, UHL, was not stressful enough. The embargo on recruitment prolongs the wait time for those on waiting lists and ensures that the numbers being treated on hospital trolleys and in our hospital corridors continue to rise. This is an absolute failure. This year to date at UHL, 19,153 people have already been treated on trolleys. We will exceed 20,000 this year, which is an utter disgrace. The people of Limerick and the mid-west have been utterly abandoned by this and previous governments. We have already surpassed last year's record figure of 18,012. I stress the word "people". Those lying on trolleys, devoid of privacy, are people. They are people who have been assessed and deemed in need of a bed at a hospital, yet no bed is available for them.

Winter is here, and without adequate staffing and with numbers at capacity, it will be a lethal winter for some of our patients. It is worth mentioning what Dr. Ian Higginson, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said, namely, for every 82 patients who wait for more than six hours, there is one associated death. The CEO of the health service noted that the embargo on recruitment will create difficulties at a time of enormous increased demand. Yet, the Government opts to retain the recruitment embargo, opts to underfund the health service, and opts not to fill thousands of essential healthcare posts.

The lack of action has sent a clear message. It is a message of capitulation from the Government. It is the white flag being raised and the message to our healthcare professionals that says they are being abandoned.

The freeze and underfunding have a real impact on our hospitals. At UHL, there is a huge shortage of cleaning and catering attendants. Those who work as porters are having to do additional time all the time. The recruitment freeze has compounded this. UHL has now been six months without an attendant in the X-ray department. The person who was to fill the role retired and still has not been replaced. This not only impacts the X-ray department but has a knock-on effect on the delivery of the diagnostic services and inpatients of the hospital. What we need to do is immediately put an end to the recruitment embargo on essential posts and reverse the Minister's disastrous decision to underfund the health service for 2024.

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