Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)

I am conscious that, while we debate tonight, there are 133 people on trolleys in UHL today. When I speak on this issue in the Dáil, I am always mindful of the families who have lost loved ones in UHL due to this issue of excessive overcrowding. Unfortunately, the report has come too late for them.

I know the Minister of State is not the Minister for Health or in a health Department, and he probably just read out his response. He has probably never been in University Hospital Limerick in his life.

The 96-bed unit will open on Friday for the first 24 patients, followed by 24 on Monday, 24 on Tuesday and 24 on Wednesday. That is welcome, but it will not have a significant impact in the hospital, where senior staff tell me it will reduce by 17 the number of people on trolleys for the day. The University Limerick Hospitals Group says it needs a minimum of 400 beds to deal with capacity. This does not take into account the factor of population growth, so it will probably need more than that.

Today must be remembered as a positive day for the mid-west but the three options that are on the cards need to be taken simultaneously. We need to increase capacity in the hospital. We have to be careful when we talk about increasing capacity because we have a plan to move maternity services across and there is no space to do both. Either we are doing one or the other, and we can do part of this under option A. Option B is for additional capacity near the campus, which I would also support. We can do both and, in fact, we could start them tomorrow. We should also start tomorrow on option C, which is to deliver what everyone says we need, knows we need and will tell you we need, which is a new model 3 hospital in the mid-west region. That is what we need to deal with the issue of capacity.

The people of Clare, north Tipperary and Limerick have suffered enough. They have been abandoned for years and years. There is no plan. The Minister of State talked about a second 96-bed unit. At the moment, that is with An Coimisiún Pleanála, so we can imagine when that will be built and when it will have any impact on the situation in UHL. As I said, we are here on 30 September following the worst month ever in the history of the UHL trolley crisis. The Government should be ashamed of itself.

See this speech in context