Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, the HSE's emergency department task force revealed some frightening statistics, when it reported that this year alone there have been some 40,000 breaches of over a 24-hour wait time to be seen in our emergency departments. The very same HSE that is failing so miserably in this regard, and the very same agency, at the same time, has been compiling a report to close an emergency department in Navan.

Acute emergency departments around the country cannot deal with the patients that they have, with over 40,000 people waiting 24 hours to be seen, and the HSE's solution is to close some more. This kind of policy is what is wrong with our health system. I want to praise Phil Ní Sheaghdha, of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, for coming out yesterday and stating that what leads to poorer outcomes for patients is sitting on trolleys in emergency departments. If patients are on trolleys, their care is not optimum. Their private information is discussed in a corridor, where potentially they are receiving bad news. However, the HSE is telling people that their optimum care is not best served by attending an emergency department in Navan and that they will be sent to an emergency department in Drogheda, where they can wait, we are told, for a minimum of 12 hours. According to these statistics, they will be waiting for 24 hours. As I said, there is a review under way. I am calling on the Minister and the HSE to scrap this fairytale review, because no matter what it puts in it, its own reports are damning and showing its review to be a sham.

I look forward to the budget next week, when we will discuss healthcare in the round. As part of the budget discussions I will be scrutinising where we are getting value for money, because on this performance, the HSE is not delivering for the very patients and citizens of this country that it serves to ensure their health.