Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are two things I would like to say on this. I am fully in agreement with the Deputy on the cases in which people do not get the care they need. That can lead to catastrophic outcomes. A recent example is the report into the tragic death of Aoife Johnston in Limerick. Unfortunately, these things do happen. Sometimes they may be preventable and sometimes they may not but we have to do everything we can. I fully agree with the Deputy that there are too many incidences of people not getting the care they need as quickly as they need it, sometimes leading to catastrophic and heartbreaking outcomes.

I also want to provide a bit of balance. How many people arrived in our emergency departments last year? It was 1.5 million. What we almost never see on social media or reported by RTÉ is the people who went in, were triaged quickly, were seen, got great care, perhaps had their lives saved, got fantastic treatment and went home. We never hear about them. Some 1.5 million people attended but what we hear about, for reasons we all understand, is the unacceptable cases where people have not gotten the care they need. I fully agree that we need to do more to have those catastrophic events become something that never happens. I just want to say that 1.5 million people attended our emergency departments last year. A lot of excellent care was provided. We need to keep going with the reduction in the number of patients on trolleys because that is how we will get to a point at which these kinds of reports are a thing of the past.

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