Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This morning, there were 97 patients in the University Hospital Limerick, UHL, on trolleys. This is the highest number of patients without a bed recorded in any Irish hospital ever. I cannot tell you how many times I have raised this issue over the past six years and yet things continue to go from bad to worse. Indeed, in November, I predicted that hospital would hit 100 patients on trolleys this winter and this morning it was just three away from that.

I joined with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, in calling for an urgent investigation into this long-standing and ever-worsening overcrowding by the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, and I invite the leaders to join the INMO in making that call. We cannot keep on going like this. The staff, patients and wider Limerick community need to see a plan to resolve these long-standing issues. The fact of the matter is there has been an abject failure by successive Governments to deal with this crisis.

We are promised a new 96-bed unit late next year, but half of those beds will be replacing existing ones that are being phased out. Therefore, we will be getting just 48 new beds. The problem is that according to hospital management, today we are 200 beds short. The people in Limerick and the mid-west will have to wait the best part of another two years before these beds open. Even then, there will still be a deficit of 150 beds. I ask the Leader, respectfully, what the people of Limerick are supposed to do in the meantime.

Recent research from the UK indicates there is one excess death for every 67 patients who stay in the emergency department for eight to 12 hours. This begs the question of how many lives are being lost each week because of the ongoing crisis in UHL. This crisis did not happen by accident; it was predicted a decade ago by health workers and trade unions. However, 11 years on, this Government is floundering.

I am asking for a dedicated debate on UHL. We have gone on for more than a decade. It has gotten worse year on year. We need to take action. I call on all of us, on a cross-party basis, to address this issue.