Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire go dtí an Teach. Despite no longer being front page news, the trolley crisis is still rumbling in emergency departments across the country, with 514 people waiting on trolleys yesterday. Waiting lists are growing longer, with 385,781 people now waiting for outpatient care. The number of people having to wait for more than a year for an outpatient appointment also increased to 61,400 at the end of last year. We have heard the current and previous Ministers for Health tell us that they know it is bad and that they are working on it but when nothing is improving, that response is simply not good enough.

The Minister has decided to extend the target for waiting times for inpatient and day case treatment from eight to 18 months. Of course this puts a better spin on the Government's failure to reduce waiting lists or even keep them at the same unacceptable level. The record high of 601 patients on trolleys in January has not yet been addressed. Dr. Tony O'Connell, the HSE's former head of acute hospitals and chairman of the task force on emergency departments issued a warning months before the crisis. He referred to some 700 patients awaiting discharge, overcrowding and use of trolleys and said that from a quality and safety perspective, the situation was unacceptable. There are still hundreds of patients in hospital beds around Ireland who are waiting to be discharged but who cannot be because of a lack of step-down facilities, long-term care and nursing home beds. The number of such beds has been cut by 2,000 over the past few years.

The fair deal delays have begun increasing again. The average wait time is almost three months and this could stretch to 18 to 20 weeks by the end of the year. Despite continued warnings over the past year about the need for additional resources for the nursing homes support scheme, the Minister has failed to provide adequate funding to relieve the situation and as a result, services right across the health system are being severely impacted. I am aware of many essential surgeries that have been delayed due, in part, to the failure to address emergency department overcrowding.

Despite all of these problems we still see the HSE making massive payouts to retiring staff, with four retiring consultants receiving lump-sum payments in excess of €300,000 last year. In Sinn Féin's alternative budget we would have provided for an additional 1,000 nursing and midwifery posts. This would have gone some way towards returning nursing levels in emergency departments and on wards to the levels seen before the massive contraction of staff numbers overseen by Fine Gael and the Labour Party. A total of 2,724 nursing posts have been lost since this Government took office and we must not forget that this followed similarly large cuts by Fianna Fáil in government.

We need additional funding for step-down beds and extra nursing home places. The Government has failed to solve the challenges facing the fair deal scheme despite ample time and opportunity. The Minister seems to forget that these are real people, real families and real heartbreaking situations. The €25 million extra provided for the scheme in the budget is likely to be now exhausted. The Government had no issue paying for private banking debt but not for a scheme that the HSE's own chief executive describes as an Achilles heel.

My party has tabled the following amendment to the Private Member's motion:

After "the health services are under funded" to insert the following paragraph:the HSE structure put in place under the Fianna Fáil party and maintained by the present Government was flawed from its inception and is not fit for purpose and the long promised fundamental reform of the organisation has not yet occurred;.

This is to reflect the fact that despite being recognised by virtually everyone as necessary, no one has yet grasped the nettle and undertaken a root and branch reform of the structure of the HSE. I hope the Government and the Minister will finally take the necessary steps to adequately fund staff for emergency departments and to ensure that the fair deal budget relates to demand rather than being simply capped. Is gá don rialtas cinntiú go bhfuil maoiniú leordhóthanach ar fail do na seomraí éigeandála agus don scéim fair deal agus bunleasú á dhéanamh ar Fheidhmeannacht na Seirbhíse Sláinte.

It is telling that a consultant from the Saolta hospital group was on local radio in Donegal this morning saying that he will have to resign if sufficient support resources are not put in place. This is on foot of another consultant leaving the service recently. It is obvious that we have a massive crisis in our health system and in our acute hospital system in particular which this Government has failed to address properly. Táimid ag súil go dtógfaidh an Rialtas na moltaí ar bord atá déanta againn le gur féidir an cheist seo a leigheas mar ar deireadh thiar, is daoine daonna atá ag fulaingt leis na gceisteanna seo ar fad agus ní leor caint, is leor gníomh ar an gceist seo.