Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the situation in our emergency departments. As the Taoiseach knows, hospitals have not been able to sustain the figures that we saw over the Christmas break. They have really struggled. They have cut activity in hospitals to try to manage the situation, but we know that this could not last forever. This morning, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation reported 654 people on trolleys. The Irish Examiner, as was alluded to, reported that an 87-year-old man spent 100 hours waiting at University Hospital Limerick. Another 90-year-old was on a trolley for five days in the emergency department. The simple fact is that our hospitals are short-staffed and we are currently short 1,000 beds. In the budget for this year the Government did not just fail to address that issue, but it made a deliberate decision to underfund the health service and restrict recruitment. Can the Taoiseach reverse this decision? All of the evidence is before our eyes and we need an intervention now.

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