Seanad debates
Tuesday, 28 June 2022
Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters
Hospital Services
12:00 pm
Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source
We are told by the HSE that medical safety issues dictate its policies and that clinicians know best. No one questions that, but what we are being asked to accept from an agency whenever it fails people in emergency departments across the country like it did in Limerick is a one-word statement from its PR department telling us, "Sorry". I do not want the HSE's "Sorry". It proved in that room two weeks ago in front of us that it did not have its homework done and that, just as happened in Limerick, it was trying to implement something before having capacity built up. It has admitted this, yet after bulldozing its way onwards, it has the brass neck to threaten politicians that we will have blood on our hands because people will die. That works both ways. Transferring people from Navan to an overcrowded emergency department in Drogheda is not a health policy. It is dangerous.
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