Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I know. I should start ticking everyone off. All of them have called for the opening hours of Ennis and Nenagh hospitals and St. John's medical assessment unit to be extended from the current hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. to divert more non-critical patients away from the emergency department in UHL.

Friends of mine or people I know in Limerick have got in touch with me about other matters. This is not directly related to accident and emergency but I think it is related to UHL and other areas. One person highlighted that Limerick has no 24-hour sexual assault treatment unit and no Saturday unit, which means it can operate only when the other clinics are closed, which in turn means, in practice, that someone who has been sexually assaulted may have to wait 12 hours without eating, drinking, changing clothes or moving until the clinic opens. Someone got in touch to say they felt that was an issue in the region.

Someone else got in touch to say the lack of community mental health services in the region is an enormous problem. What is there is predominantly psychiatry, waiting lists and short appointments. There is the length of time it takes medications to work and wild over-reliance on medications that are barely at placebo levels of efficiency, which have made what is there seem pointless to many people and exacerbated the crisis. The child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS are a disaster, as we know, and there is nowhere for a distressed person to go except into an accident and emergency department, which is obviously part of the issue in the region. This person also said the services are not equipped to deal with dual diagnoses - neither, to be fair, are a lot of the services - which is ridiculous and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Addiction is a symptom of distress. There is a severe need for holistic services all under one roof in the community. There are waiting lists in the order of months or a year for anything at the moment.

Another person got in touch to say people need proper community care alternatives to hospital emergency departments. There has to be a stronger co-ordination between community care facilities and hospitals to ensure step-down beds - we spoke about this last week and have spoken about it many times - are available in the community for speedy discharges and to ensure home help is readily available for people.

A recently qualified doctor in the region got in touch with me to say she knows people are not coming into UHL accident and emergency department when they need to do so because of fear. She knows that is costing lives, and that is heartbreaking.