Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am giving the facts. In fact, I am giving the facts that were supplied by the doctors who actually work in UHL and who refer to "the chronic under resourcing of the region".

To be frank, what I am seeing here this evening is Government politicians pretending to be in opposition when Senator Conway and Senator Maria Byrne voted for each and every budget for the last number of years in this Chamber, and each one of those budgets resulted in "the chronic under resourcing", to use the words of the doctors in UHL. Those are the facts of the matter.

In terms of dealing with the crisis as it is today, I have a few points to make to the Minister. Shannondoc collapsed at Christmas, which he knows. I appreciate that he arranged a meeting for us after Christmas but when I asked a simple question about how many missed calls were not picked up, its manager could not tell me. Shannondoc does not even count the amount of missed calls in an essential service. How can that be? The number of healthcare assistants who were allocated to the emergency department was 26.6 in 2017 when it was due to deal with 170 patients a day, which has since gone up to 250 patients a day. Does anyone want to hazard a guess at how many additional healthcare assistants were allocated by management? It is a round figure; it is zero. Can the Minister explain that to me?