Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

In 2009, the emergency departments at Ennis, Nenagh and St. John's in Limerick were shut down under the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government. They were downgraded to minor injury units. This arrangement has been kept in place by the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government and successive governments since then, leaving the only model 4 hospital in the entire region at University Hospital Limerick. These cuts were opposed by the vast majority of people in the region, many of whom said they would result in disaster - and how right they were. The people of the region have taken their opposition to these cuts and their support for properly resourced health services in their communities to the streets on more than one occasion. Five thousand people marched the streets before Covid. More than 10,000 people marched the streets after the death of Aoife Johnston.

Government policies have resulted in massive overcrowding at University Hospital Limerick, the shutdown of the emergency departments in the other hospitals and a lack of resources put in to compensate. A nurse at Aoife's inquest said that at the start of her shift that night there were 153 people waiting for treatment. The independent investigation by Mr. Justice Frank Clarke said that Aoife's death was almost certainly avoidable. It went on to say that the emergency department was in such confusion that there was no reality to the care plans that night.

The Minister has said he wants to inquire into the idea of a model 3 hospital in the region. Sinn Féin in this motion is calling for a model 3 hospital in the region. I spoke this afternoon to hospital campaigners in the mid-west who expressed disappointment that it has taken Sinn Féin 15 years, until the eve of an election, to come to this conclusion. One of those campaigners, Melanie Cleary, whose daughter died just hours after being discharged from UHL in 2019, said that this motion does not go far enough and that emergency departments in Ennis, Nenagh and St. John's need to be reopened.

It is clear that the policy of successive governments on this issue has been a disaster. There is a need for a reversal of cuts and a need for radical change. This motion does not go far enough in that regard.

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