Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 January 2023

Emergency Department Waiting Times and Hospital Admissions: Statements

 

9:30 am

Photo of Sharon KeoganSharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is lovely to see the Minister in the Chamber. A €169 million winter plan to run from October 2022 to March 2023 was announced on 11 October 2022. Then Senator Buttimer asked for debate on it during the Order of Business the following day. In December 2022, Senator Maria Byrne asked for a debate on the winter plan in the new year in light of the failure to meet targets in recruiting consultants. No debate was ever scheduled and the Minister never came in - not that this matters anyway. Every year, we have a winter plan. I am sure hundreds of staff hours are spent drafting it and hundreds of millions of euro of taxpayer's money are then spent on it. Yet the newspapers tell the same tale, with headlines referring to the HSE being stretched to the limit, people being on trolleys over the Christmas, that this will be the year the HSE breaks, etc.

Nothing seems to change but this is not true. We pump billions more euro into the HSE every year for what feels like no change. The Government's annual expenditure on healthcare has increased every year without fail since 2014. In 2020, it reached €26.4 billion. I shudder to think what the figures for the past two years will be. Maybe I am the odd one out, but I care a whole lot less about Paschal Donohoe's four-figure sum than I do about the HSE's 11-figure sum. Tens of billions of euro are spent annually on what feels like propping up a rapidly deflating bouncy castle.

A brief snapshot of Ireland's healthcare system, the most expensive of the EU-15 on the basis of national income, shows: nurses are working in horrendous conditions; 100,000 patients have been left on trolleys; the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, has warned that workers are stretched to the limit while staff shortages are reported across the country; and there are still almost 900 vacant permanent consultant posts, as well as hundreds of unfilled non-consultant hospital doctor posts.Each and every person still working in this system continues to work daily to compensate for the hundreds of vacant posts, often filling roles meant for two people or more. We are competing against countries such as Australia and Canada for doctors and, frankly, we are losing the competition to recruit doctors.

The Minister said earlier this month that overcrowding in hospitals was going to get worse, and that the HSE is to call on senior medical staff, such as consultants, to come in at weekends for the next few weeks to help alleviate the situation. The fruit of that is that the HR section in the HSE is sending emails to doctors looking for an explanation from its staff who cannot assist with extra hours, citing the "unprecedented situation the hospital finds itself in". However, it is not unprecedented. For years, due to systematic failures at organisational level in our bloated healthcare system, even the most modest increase in demand for capacity has signalled some sort of crisis in our hospitals. In the face of all this, the decision has been made to waive hospital charges for patients in emergency departments. What planet are we living on? We have burnt-out nurses, doctors doing the job of two people, and hundreds of consultant posts vacant long term. Let us open the floodgates and have every Tom, Dick and Harry with a rash or a stuffed nose head into waiting rooms, because it is free.

Everything in the Minister's remit is now an emergency and he must show up to provide answers to Senators, face to face. Last year he appeared in the Seanad four times for debates on legislation and Commencement matters. Does he think that is good enough? People are dying on trolleys in emergency departments. Does he think that is right?

I care little about health services in other parts of the European Union. This is our country and our people, and we can see what is happening on the Minister's watch. Why was there no consultation with the nursing homes before November and December? The Minister knew this was going to happen. It should have been done.

Community care does not open over Christmas. I am aware of an elderly couple where the husband ended up in hospital. The woman's carer, her son, was taken into hospital also. The woman, who has dementia, had no one to care for her. Who could I reach out to for help? The doctor-on-call could not be contacted. People were ringing the doctor-on-call for three days. The only service I could reach out to was the local Garda or ambulance. That was the only choice I had. Citizens deserve better. The Minister's voters deserve better, and he knows that.

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