Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is not like them, to be fair. I got a distress call this afternoon from University Hospital Limerick. The Leader will know this is not the first time I have brought up the issue of the hospital. There were 80 people on trolleys there this morning. A month ago, the head of nursing declared to staff that having trolleys in corridors was a red-line issue for her, yet this morning she was forced to instruct the location of three trolleys on every corridor of the hospital. Worse than that, the patient dispatch unit also has trolleys in its corridor. My colleague, Ger Kennedy, from SIPTU, who asked to be quoted so people would understand the gravity of the situation, described University Hospital Limerick as akin to Beirut. We have spoken about this on so many occasions. Staff morale is at an all-time low. This is really saying something. God knows, the staff have had a hard time in the hospital in recent years.

There is genuine despair over the lack of Government action and over the Government acting at times as a roadblock to progress. I will give a specific example. It was put to me this morning on the train as I came here. There are a number of new nursing graduates, including seven midwife graduates. There is a serious shortage of midwives across the country, particularly in University Maternity Hospital Limerick, yet the seven midwives are unemployed because the maternity hospital in Limerick does not have permission to hire them. The Minister likes to play with terms. He says there is no moratorium. One can call it a pause or moratorium, or whatever one likes, but the fact of the matter is that our hospitals are in crisis and University Hospital Limerick is in no position to hire. That decision rests with one person alone, the Minister for Health, the same Minister for Health who slipped in for one morning and slipped out again without telling anyone in advance what was happening.

I see colleagues from the mid-west present. To be fair to them, they have also highlighted the crisis in University Hospital Limerick. I am acting not on a party-political basis but on the basis that we have had enough. In Limerick, Clare and across the mid-west, we have had enough of our hospitals failing our people, of people dying in corridors and of the crisis getting ever worse. Let us not forget it is only 14 October. Limerick holds the record of 82 people on trolleys. What will the record be in another month, December or January? Is it any wonder that the Government is seeking a quick election? It knows it will only get worse. It is time for action. How long will it take?