Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Leader on his nuptials over the Christmas period.

I also send the solidarity of the House to Joanne Hayes and her family. I acknowledge the absolute injustice and torture she suffered at the hands of the institutions. One can only come to the conclusion that there was absolute collusion between individuals working in those institutions to be complicit in her torture over months and years. That must never happen again. One thing that has improved in a sense is that now people are not willing to stand by and let these things happen. However, it shows the younger generation exactly how women were treated in this State. We hope it will never happen again.

There should be an inquiry into the behaviour of those involved in making the decisions that led to the treatment of Joanne Hayes. It is not something that can be let lie. I am very conscious that behind this there is a woman and a family, who must have control of what happens from here on in. She should be substantially compensated. She can never be truly adequately compensated for what has happened to her, but she should have a say in that. I do not want this just to be another outcry which is then dropped. It needs to be brought to a conclusion once and for all. Those who behaved in the way that they did need to be held accountable.I commend my own colleague, Deputy Louise O'Reilly, our spokesperson on health, on bringing together today the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, IAEM, the Irish National Midwives Organisation, INMO, and SIPTU representing the care workers, to tell us their experiences of working inside the emergency departments of this State. What they said was not news to any of us. However, it really brought it home that, across the board, the clinicians and the workers are working in a very dangerous and toxic environment, both for themselves and for the patients they see. They are really concerned that we need an accelerated programme of reinstating beds. They have the solutions. That is why we do not need the review of the bed capacity. We do not need any more evidence. The evidence is already there.

I would encourage people working inside the system to come forward. They have been targeted in the past. I know myself when we have had community campaigns, where individual nurses who supported the campaigns, either to keep hospitals open or to keep beds open, have been targeted. That must stop. We must have a critical mass working with the public and a critical mass of workers to come forward to say that these situations are dangerous and they can no longer go on.

I ask the Minister for Health to come into the House, maybe even to specifically address the situation of workers. It is not good enough that every time the Minister is coming all the beds are cleared and everything is made to look rosy. The management within some of these hospitals are telling clinicians and nurses that if they do not like it, they can leave it. We have to stand up for workers in these situations.