Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit agus ba mhaith liom comhghairdeas a dhéanamh. I congratulate the Minister of State on his new appointment. It is nice to have him on side. I have always found him to be well able and most respectful. I wish him luck in his new role.

A number of weeks ago the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, and the CEO of the HSE, Mr. Bernard Gloster, visited the infamous University Hospital Limerick, UHL.They made announcements about beds, recruitment and so on. As luck would have it, and it was unlucky for my friend, by accident I ended up visiting a friend who was in hospital that day. When I went to visit her, she was in serious back pain and in serious agony, with an official pain level of nine out of ten. She had been waiting in a hospital bed for an MRI scan for a number of days. She ended up waiting 15 nights in hospital for that MRI scan. I asked her whether I could advocate for her and spoke to the consultant on call who was in charge of the ward that day. I spoke to the head of nursing on that ward that day as well. They both categorically informed me that there was only one working MRI scanner in the entire hospital.

I found this deeply worrying because beds are tied up as a result. People do not want to go home because they are in pain and if they go home, they will not get resolution. People want to know what is wrong with them and what they can do. MRI scans are very useful for that. They also do not go home because if they do, if they are told they can wait as there is a waiting list, there is no waiting list. If they go home, they fall off the list. That is why people sit in the accident and emergency department for hours and hours and days and days, and are in beds and on trolleys for days. They know if they go home, they will go back to the bottom of the barrel again. First, there is no system for people on a list to get priority based on when they entered the hospital. Second, why the hell is there only one working MRI scanner? What is going on?

This hospital is a centre of excellence. It covers a whole region. We know about the problems and the trolley numbers; they are infamous. People are literally dying as a result. I always try to look at solutions. Why is it so bad in UHL? One of the reasons must be the fact that one working MRI scanner means that people are locked into beds. To spend 15 nights in bed waiting for an MRI is absolute insanity. That woman did not want to take up a bed, but she needed to be seen to. All these people on trolleys downstairs are waiting to be seen, but they cannot come up because others are waiting in beds for an MRI scan for more than two weeks. It is absolutely barbaric. You would not get it in India.

I have a very specific question. Will the Minister for Health ask the HSE why there is only one working MRI scanner in UHL? It leads to patients taking up many extra bed nights while waiting for MRI scans. There is no list system. I can write a computer programme. I could come up with a system to have people on a list, even with just a ledger. This is not 1940 when we did not have computers and filing systems. As no list is in place to keep people's MRI scans in order, patients are reluctant to go home because if they do, they go to the bottom of the waiting list. Will the Minister please raise this matter with the acting manager of UHL, who was absent on the day we were there with him and the CEO of the HSE? There was no sign of the acting manager. Will the Minister insist that this is rectified as soon as possible or please give some explanation as to why this is the situation in our centre of excellence?