Marie Moloney (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will make it very brief because I know others want to get in and the time is short. I thank the Minister for coming in and for his statement here. The extra nurses, doctors and so on look good on paper. However, nurses do not go on strike just for the fun of it. They are encountering problems in emergency departments and there is a domino effect, because if there are not enough beds in the community and in community hospitals, people cannot be moved out to those and then there are no beds for people in emergency departments to be moved into. I was listening to a nurse on the radio yesterday morning and she said that much of the problem was not just in emergency departments, but about the availability of beds. These patients have been seen by emergency department staff and they are supposed to go onto the wards for whatever care they need, but the beds are not there, so they end up staying on trolleys. There is a domino effect. For example, there is a hospital in Dingle, County Kerry, and beds have been put into a section of it, but they are not open.

There is clearly a staff shortage there and while I appreciate that there are 750 more nurses we still do not have enough, so we need to concentrate on that area. I will give the Minister one example of a nurse I was dealing with. I think I have written to his office about it. An Irish woman who went to America and trained as a nurse there came back home to live with her family and decided she would take up nursing in Ireland. Lo and behold, she has to go back to college in Ireland for four years before she can nurse here. That cannot be right. She has been nursing in America but she has to come back now and do four more years in college. She has to start at the very same place as someone coming out of secondary school. There are places we could look at to bring in some extra nurses.

The home care package has been increased and I can see that, but it is vital to help people keep the patient in the home. As I spoke on the Social Welfare Bill yesterday on the Order of Business, I complimented the carers who care for people in their homes because emergency departments and hospitals would be far worse off if these people were not caring for people in the home. The home care package is vital to help those people. I wonder if it would help if GPs could send people directly for an x-ray without having to go through emergency departments. I know there will be x-ray machines in the primary care centres when they are up and running, but if one sends someone over to an emergency department, they must wait there before being sent on for an x-ray, so that is using up more time.

I could keep talking about it, but I know others want to get in and the time is very short. The spokesperson on health sends his apologies because he could not be here to speak on this, so I will let others have their say and we will wait to hear the Minister's responses.