Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Senator Conway that there should be an urgent debate with Ministers about the ambulance service. After watching the programme the other night and hearing from representatives of the ambulance organisation throughout the country, one wonders why the Taoiseach did not dispatch the Secretary General of the Department of Health to the head of that organisation, considering the proclamations of how good it is.

We must have an urgent debate about the hospital groupings throughout the country. That point will not be lost on the Leader, with the south east so often treated in a peripheral fashion like the north west. People are aware that in the north west there is no cardio-catheterisation laboratory facility, meaning if somebody has a heart attack in that part of the country, they are at a marked disadvantage with regard to survivability and treatment compared with somebody elsewhere in the country. As a result, there are pathways to so-called centres of excellence, which in this instance would be the University College Hospital Galway. Yesterday a constituent had an angiogram there and was fitted with two stents before being returned in an ambulance to the coronary care unit at Sligo hospital. Having inquired about him at Sligo, his family was informed there was no bed for him at the coronary care unit in Sligo so he was on a trolley in the accident and emergency department.

He was on it for many hours following his rough journey by ambulance to Sligo some hours after undergoing a heart procedure. He is almost 84 years of age and as I left Sligo this morning to come here to raise the issue, he was still not in a bed in the coronary care unit. If the reconfiguration of hospital groupings and the vision of the Minister amounts to something where people in their mid-80s are despatched on the same day they undergo a heart procedure on a rough road ride for three hours, to be put on a trolley in another hospital, the system is failing dismally. What protocols are in place to cover this type of situation? Are 80 year old patients being discharged randomly into ambulances and sent back to hospitals where there is no bed for them or does anybody take time to check these issues? Elderly people in the north west are sick of being treated like second class citizens. Why is it that when reports are released with much fanfare and trumpeted as progress in the health service, the reality is that an 84 year old man, following a heart procedure, is cast aside to lie on a trolley with no bed available for him? In such cases somebody somewhere is not doing his or her job. Will the Leader bring this issue to the attention of the Minister and arrange for him to come to the House to discuss it as a matter of urgency?