Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Everyone, regardless of where in Ireland they live or how much is in their pocket, deserves to be treated with dignity and respect when they are sick. Everyone deserves to have timely access to the medical treatments they need. I know the Taoiseach appreciates that, but his Government’s policies are hurting people in hospitals, not helping them. I am talking about the current HSE recruitment freeze, overcrowding, long waiting lists, the trolley crisis, a retention crisis and a lack of community supports for those discharged from hospital. The list goes on.

Every week, we all hear healthcare horror stories. We hear from patients detailing awful experiences in hospital emergency departments; working people worrying about healthcare access for older parents or younger children; people with complex medical needs who are afraid of getting sick if they go into hospital; and front-line medical workers who are exhausted and worn out, looking to greener pastures in Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere.

Yesterday, my Labour Party colleague in Limerick, Councillor Conor Sheehan, shared the recent awful experience of his grandfather, Gerry Mullins, at University Hospital Limerick. Last Thursday, on the advice of Mr. Mullins's GP, his family brought him to UHL emergency department to seek treatment for an ulcer in his leg. What followed his arrival offers a desperate insight into the reality of emergency healthcare in Ireland. Upon discovering that his ulcer had become septic, the overworked staff at UHL began to treat Councillor Sheehan's grandfather, who at that point had become extremely unwell. However, over the course of the emergency treatment while very unwell, he had to spend four days on a trolley. During that time, Conor Sheehan and his family witnessed frenetic scenes at UHL, with multiple vulnerable patients exhausted, agitated and having to wait on trolleys. The nursing and medical staff are chronically overworked and overburdened. The staff at UHL deserve so much more than to have to work under those conditions. Patients at UHL and their families deserve better, too. We know this is not an isolated case. I express my sympathies again to the family of 16-year-old Aoife Johnston, who died so tragically from meningitis at UHL in December 2022.

Conditions in our hospitals have major ramifications for health outcomes. The INMO tells us it takes just six hours on a trolley for a person’s long-term health outcomes to decline. There is no more give in the system. It falls to the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and their colleagues to address the crisis, with the INMO telling us that 1,552 people have been on trolleys in UHL alone since the beginning of January. Across the country, so many medical professionals are working through yet another winter in impossible and often dangerous environments. All that is achieved by miserly recruitment freezes is to put more pressure on services. Will the Taoiseach end the damaging recruitment freeze, address the trolley crisis and ensure our hospitals are safe? What will he do this winter to address the healthcare needs of the people of Limerick in the context of the ongoing crisis at UHL?

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