I raise again with the Taoiseach the dangerous overcrowding in our hospitals. I raise it again today because of figures released by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, indicating that 679 patients are waiting today without beds in Ireland's hospitals. This is the highest daily figure of 2019 and the second highest ever recorded. The INMO has rightly described this as "obscene" and it has told us its members are faced with inhumane working conditions, with patients being put at increased risk. This is a very familiar story and I and others have consistently raised these matters with the Taoiseach. Yet here we are again today with 679 patients without beds. Not all are on trolleys as in some cases there is not even a trolley.

The Taoiseach should imagine he needs to go to hospital today because he is sick or experiencing an emergency. He would already be worried and his family would be worried. He should imagine how he would feel, knowing our hospitals are creaking under the strain and pressure they face. It would be an upsetting or terrifying experience.

This is not just a matter of numbers. This is about people who deserve far better than the perpetual crisis that the Government visits on our health service. What we have witnessed on the Government's watch is a complete and utter failure in health policy. For eight years now, Governments have failed to make any inroads into tackling the trolley crisis. We have had three Fine Gael Ministers for Health, including the Taoiseach, and things have not got any better. In fact, the situation gets worse by the month and year. Record numbers of people have been left on trolleys for the first ten months of this year. As we progress deeper into the winter, this problem will become more acute. Last week, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation published figures showing that 11,452 patients in Irish hospitals were left without beds in October. These numbers should cause alarm bells to ring. They reflect the fact that the Government has failed to tackle this real and immediate pressure.

As I have said previously, to address the crisis, the Government can and should do a number of things around recruitment and retention of staff, the reopening of closed beds, step-down facilities, more home help hours and investment in primary and community care. Given that the Taoiseach has consistently ignored those pleas, what does he have to say today to the staff and patients in University Hospital Limerick, which again has the highest number of people on trolleys, and Cork University Hospital, which has the second highest number and has been under extraordinary pressure for some time? What does he have to say to the staff working in dangerous conditions and the patients, in particular the 674 patients who are left today without a bed?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I do not need to imagine the scenario that Deputy McDonald speaks about. I am a doctor by profession. I worked in the public health service for seven years. I worked in three emergency departments and visited all of the other emergency departments during my time as Minister for Health so I fully understand what the experience of an overcrowded emergency department is for staff, patients and their families. I assure Deputy McDonald that we are making every effort to improve the situation.

There were a lot of patients on trolleys this morning. The figure is down to approximately 317 at the moment. We anticipate most of the remainder will be in beds by tonight. That still leaves us with a severe overcrowding problem in many of our hospitals. There are now approximately 11,000 beds in our acute hospitals. That figure has been increasing year on year since 2014. We are back to the number of beds we had in our hospitals approximately ten years ago, having reversed the cuts that began under a previous Administration. We have more doctors working in our public health service than ever before. We have 600 more nurses and midwives than we had this time last year. We have in recent years put in place more beds, nurses and doctors and we will continue to do so. This is happening against the backdrop of ever-increasing demand, which puts our health service under extraordinary pressure.

The Minister for Health met the chief executive of the HSE this afternoon and has been in contact with all of the chief executives of the hospital groups to see what more can be done, whether more beds can be opened and whether more funding for the fair deal scheme and home care - which has already been put in place - can help to get more patients out of hospital quickly. Deputy McDonald will know that an additional 1 million home help hours have been provided for in the budget and fair deal applications are now ticking over in about four weeks. We are also addressing the issue of care in the community to avoid people having to go into hospital in the first place. This ranges from encouraging more people to have the flu vaccine to better chronic care in the community so that people with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, and other illnesses do not end up in hospital in the first place. We have signed a contract in recent months with general practitioners to enable exactly that.

Deputy McDonald specifically mentioned Limerick. I would say to the staff there that there is a new 60-bed block under construction. Once it has been completed, we will try to get the facility open as quickly as possible and hopefully that will relieve the overcrowding in that particular hospital.

The Taoiseach regularly recounts his professional curriculum vitae for the House. From my point of view, the very fact that he is a medical professional, a doctor, and that he has worked in the public health system makes this all the more shocking and intolerable.

The Taoiseach has recounted the actions his Government has taken but the figures do not lie. In October, unless the Taoiseach contests the figure, 11,452 patients were left with no beds. Despite the list of actions he has set out, this is what we are left with. I am glad the Minister for Health met the CEO of the HSE but I would not hold out any great hope that much will come of that meeting. I have a suggestion for the Taoiseach. He mentioned 1 million additional home help hours but I suggest that this be increased to 2.5 million because that is what is needed to clear the waiting list. The 1 million additional hours will simply relieve the pressure regarding 40% of the waiting list. Let us do something radical and imaginative. Let us actually try something with a prospect of working and allocate the 2.5 million home help hours that are required.

I suggest that the Deputy's own lack of practical knowledge of the health service, health policy and how it works is what gives her reason to believe that there are easy solutions to complex problems such as this, which Governments of all parties have struggled to deal with for many decades. If she wants to talk to somebody about it, she should talk to her party's deputy leader, Michelle O'Neill, a former Minister for Health north of the Border. Ms O'Neill would know a lot about overcrowding in hospitals because it is a feature of the health service in Northern Ireland as well, which Sinn Féin was responsible for until it collapsed the Executive two years ago.

I suppose Sinn Féin is responsible for the trolley count too.

The Government will do everything it can to improve access to our hospitals and reduce overcrowding. That involves providing more beds, which is being done. We are up to 11,000 beds now, which is back to where we were ten years ago in terms of acute capacity in our hospitals. We have more doctors in our health service than ever before and 600 more nurses than this time last year. Additional resources are available for the fair deal scheme and for home care, and we will roll these out. We will push all of those solutions and hopefully they will make a difference.