Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Health, Stephen Donnelly, has said the latest trolley figures, which show that there were over 100,000 people without a bed in an Irish hospital so far this year, demonstrate the true horror of the hospital crisis.
Deputy Donnelly warned against a sense of complacency and said that people should be alarmed by a situation which is going from bad to worse.
He said, “The most recent figures issued by the INMO show that for only the second time ever, the number of people on a trolley has surpassed 100,000 – frighteningly this also includes almost 1,000 children.
“With the rest of November to get through and the whole of December, it’s reasonable to assume this number will rise steadily.
“I’m not sure that Minister Harris gets it. 100,000 men, women and children, is the population of Bray, Greystones, Wicklow Town, Arklow, Blessington and their surrounds. They are lying on trolleys, in over-crowded Emergency Departments with nurses and doctors who are stretched beyond all reasonable capacity to look after them.
“Nowhere else in Europe are failures like this tolerated and that’s why we know there are solutions. We need to get to safe staffing levels for nurses, remove the consultant pay inequality to address the chronic shortage of doctors, equip GPs to treat people at home or in their communities, open the diagnostics suites longer, ensure that home care packages are in place, so patients can be safely discharged,” concluded Deputy Donnelly.
