Hospital overcrowding and staffing
Deputy Pearse Doherty highlighted severe emergency department overcrowding and questioned Government handling of the health service. The Tánaiste replied that recruitment was continuing within budgets and said additional funding was being provided, including a specific plan for Limerick.
We are not even into December yet and there are unbearable pressures on our hospitals. Like many, I read the account of the Tánaiste's parliamentary colleague who was embarrassed at the overcrowding in the emergency department in Crumlin. The question that many of us are asking is what planet has the Government been living on for the past number of years. This has been the lived experience of thousands of patients throughout our health system, not this week, last week or last month, but for many years under the Government. Monday saw the highest ever recorded number of patients without a bed in any Irish hospital, which stood at 85 in University Hospital Limerick. In my county of Donegal, Letterkenny University Hospital has seen 224 patients without a bed since Monday of this week. As of this morning, there were 31 patients awaiting beds.
There are many issues that the Government is not addressing, including capacity and closed beds, but I will focus on the recruitment freeze. The Tánaiste may dispute the fact that there is a freeze, but the HSE has acknowledged that "non-critical replacement posts will be paused". Whether one calls it a pause or a freeze, it is having a serious impact on staffing our hospitals and providing the necessary capacity to ensure that patients are admitted to hospitals. Will the Tánaiste give a commitment to the patients who are lying on trolleys or to the thousands of others who had to experience this indignity that the HSE recruitment freeze will be lifted right now?
Comment on this
As we have said week after week, there is not a recruitment freeze. There is recruitment going on, but it has to be within budgets that have been planned for.
Comment on this
There is no Department that allows the sectors that it is responsible for to recruit staff without a budget to do so. That is what the HSE did in the past, but not anymore. This does not mean that the HSE is not recruiting. It is. We need to provide more money, and we are. That is why there are significantly more doctors and nurses in the system now than 12 months ago. We will continue to do that.
There are real pressures on accident and emergency departments. This is particularly so in Limerick, where there is a specific plan in place - working with a winter plan team - to try to deal with those pressures while we build new capacity in Limerick in terms of more beds, as planned by the Government.