Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Cathaoirleach is very welcome to the Chair. It is lovely to see him sitting there. I congratulate Senator Chambers who I am sure will do a fantastic job as she did as Deputy Leader. I very much enjoyed working with her and I know that I will continue to work well with her. I also wanted to welcome BQMS O'Brien and Ms Kettle. I thank them for coming in. It is very important that we have that meeting between the legislators and people who are impacted by the work that goes on here. It is very important.

I wanted to raise the really important and shocking situation in emergency departments in our hospitals around the country. I found myself in an emergency department in recent weeks. We talk about waiting lists and people's concerns but I wanted to say that the staff are doing a job that we all feel is one of the most important jobs and they are doing it seamlessly. I spoke to staff when I was there who were working 13-hour days with two breaks. One nurse told me that she did not like to take her final break because she hated the thought of people waiting for her to come back.Thirteen hours a day is an awful long time for her to be on her feet and surrounded by people who have been waiting hours to get in to see her.

Something needs to be done. I have a concern that we have an ageing population and we are failing to see that forward planning in many instances. University Hospital Galway has a catchment area with a population of 1.1 million people, which is huge. We are seeing some changes there as we see a new emergency department is on the cards and it has got the approval of Cabinet, but we are still a way off that. Even to sort out that one issue is not to sort out all of the issues around staffing. That is the number one issue that doctors, nurses and all staff across the hospital are telling us about and it needs to be resolved. It would be appropriate to speak to the Minister, Deputy Harris, and that we would have him in the House to discuss forward planning across a number of areas, in particular forward planning between him and the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, on how we can get that workforce and ensure that people stay in the country, given over half of our doctors are leaving the country. That is an urgent debate that we need to have in the coming weeks.