Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

We have 31 people in there with nowhere to go due to delayed discharges. We have a serious problem with privacy and dignity. We have a problem with lack of staff and lack of clinical leads, notwithstanding the progress. I pay tribute to the staff. Let us go back to Savita Halappanavar in 2012, and forward. This is a hospital seriously under pressure, a congested site with not enough staff and not enough beds. They are short 232 beds according to their own press release. I pay tribute to the staff. What I do not pay tribute to is all of the Governments that have let this happen. There was an options appraisal way back where the hospital was to move to Merlin Park, and I foolishly relaxed thinking we were getting a brand new hospital. For the past five years we have been given a jigsaw approach to this and finally we are hearing now with a master plan, but there is no sign of it.

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