Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

He said it will be mid year. Why do I always watch that? It is not only because we need it. It is because the opening of our famous nursing home in Nenagh is dependent on it. When that block opens, our nursing home will return to being a nursing home. It should never have happened.

Medical assessment units, MAUs, were meant to be open 24 hours. That will not happen. I think the Minister has acknowledged it will not or else Mr. Gloster has. That is not the issue. Then that changed to them being open until midnight. That will not happen either. I just spoke to the nurses in Nenagh. There is not a hope in hell. They do not have the capacity. They do not have the consultants, the diagnostics, the bloods or in any way, shape or form, the means to do that. I would love if they were open. I am a massive fan of the MAUs. They prevent people ending up in hospital. The other issue is that, due to the lack of beds, the fact that we have a 50-bed nursing home sitting beside the hospital that now has 18 or 20 people in it, has not made any difference to the actual number of people on trolleys and overcrowding. The people in the hospital cannot go anywhere. They cannot get into a nursing home. I spend hours - hours - every week trying to get people into nursing homes. I ring as far away as Birr, Portlaoise and everywhere because our nursing homes are full. People have to wait for someone to pass away, while we have a nursing home that is not being used. It is counterproductive because the people who need to go into it are staying in hospital.

I put in a parliamentary question some time ago about the length of hospital stays. I asked about patients who are in for more than six months, nine months and a year. The number of people who spend more than six months in a hospital because they have nowhere else to go is absolutely startling. We need to deal with that. They cannot go anywhere because some of them are of such high dependency that no private nursing home will take them. That is how stark the situation is. They are taking up beds at €1,600 a night. Even if we look at the situation from a financial point of view, it is madness, let alone that we need to be considerate of these people in providing care for them.

Will the Minister please deal with the issues I have outlined in regard to cancer care in Limerick? The situation I described is from the horse's mouth. I ask that he readjust in respect of the MAUs. I respect what is happening on the capital side but the dates indicated will not be met. I hope the delivery will happen as quickly as possible. Most of all, when it comes to the pathways for patients in the community and in acute care, including my poor dad, who is on his way to hospital right now, there must be positive change in the medium term. We will not have all these issues solved in the next year or two. We need interim steps and pathways to manage the situation while we have these capacity issues.

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