Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Táim ag díriú isteach ar ospidéal na Gaillimhe arís agus ar an méid othair atá ar thralaithe, 62 inniu. Tá daoine ag fulaingt agus ag fáil bháis ar thralaithe fad is atáimid ag caint is ag ceiliúradh torthaí na dtoghchán. I am glad the Minister is here today. He previously served as Minister for public expenditure and reform and he is currently the Minister for Finance. His brief directly relates to the issue I will bring up. As I speak, 62 patients are on trolleys in a hospital that is billed as a centre of excellence. Earlier in the year, there were 73 patients on trolleys, which made it the third-worst hospital in the country. The latter were the worst figures since the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, started collecting data some time ago.

Why am I raising this issue? It is because no progress has been made at all in respect of the hospital in Galway, other than a temporary accident and emergency department, which costs €15 million or €16 million. The background to this is that in February 2015, when we were told by Deputy Varadkar, who was Minister for Health at the time, that the hospital was not fit for purpose. This happened again in 2016 and up to 2020, with the then new programme for Government. All of the time we were told it was not fit for purpose. We foolishly relaxed because an options appraisal stated we should build a brand-new facility at Merlin Park University Hospital. That did not happen. The appraisal was revised and a decision was made to do up some of the properties at the hospital in Galway. All this time, the staff were struggling through trolleys on corridors and elsewhere. HIQA visited in February of last year. Its representatives thought the facility was grossly overcrowded, with 28 people on trolleys.

Today, there are 62. Think of what that does to the staff, not to mention the patients who are suffering and dying. I would love to ask who here in this Dáil, including myself, has spent any time on a trolley in a public hospital. I asked it this morning and got no answer. I think that if we did spend a little time, there might be more of a push to do something about it.

We are here now looking at a preliminary business assessment case and a strategic assessment review, and all the time I am getting different answers. It would be easier to read The Castleor The Metamorphosisby Kafka, which is extremely difficult to read, in German, Irish or English than to understand the answers that are coming in respect of the hospital in Galway. We need a new accident and emergency unit and a new maternity ward in the hospital, given the current one is functioning in suboptimal conditions, as is the whole hospital. The options appraisal that was carried out in 2019 told us that 64% of the infrastructure in the regional hospital was not suitable, and 99% in Merlin Park, and all of it more than 40 years old. All the time what we are doing is adding to a congested site in a hit-and-miss fashion, with the promise of an accident and emergency unit and a new children's and maternity ward but with no idea of when that is going to happen, except for the Minister's Department and his previous Department telling us there are new rules and we must do this but nothing is happening.

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