Tá Cumann Altraí agus Ban Cabhrach na hÉireann, IMNO, i ndiaidh líon na n-othar a bhí ar thralaithe ospidéil i mí Bealtaine a fhoilsiú. Bhí beagnach 12,000 duine ar thralaithe le linn na míosa sin agus ba leanaí iad 300 acu. Is daoine iad seo a bhí ar thralaithe sna hospidéil an mhí seo caite agus tá an figiúr níos airde ná mar a bhí i mí Eanáir i mbliana, an mhí ba mheasa ó thosaíodh cuntas na n-othar ar thralaithe. Níl aon phlean ag an Rialtas seo dul i ngleic leis an ngéarchéim seo inár seirbhíse sláinte. Yesterday, the Irish Midwives and Nurses Organisation, IMNO, published the number of patients on hospital trolleys in the month of May and these figures show that almost 12,000 people, including 300 children, were on trolleys in our hospitals last month. That figure is higher than January this year when we saw the worst levels of overcrowding in our hospitals since the IMNO started to collate these figures. This level of overcrowding at the beginning of summer is unprecedented and needs to be tackled to prevent even worse chaos this winter. The trolley crisis is no longer a seasonal event. It is a national crisis and a national scandal. Not content with making the housing crisis worse day by day, the Government has now done the same with the health services. Those crises are going to get worse every single day as long as this Government spends its time in office.

We have a situation now where nurses are working in a system in which it has been normalised for more than 500 people a day to be on trolleys in our hospitals. Behind every one of those statistics is a person. It is often a person waiting in pain for a hospital bed. In the first three months of this year, the average wait time in emergency departments for admission to a bed was almost 12 hours. It was worse for children and those over the age of 75 because, on average, they had to wait 13 hours to get a hospital bed.

Let me give an example of what that means for individuals. A 78-year-old woman from Waterford who suffers from cardiac issues had to wait 24 hours for a hospital bed. Her daughter left her at the hospital the day before and she called her mother at 3 p.m. the following day. Her mother told her on the phone that she had been diagnosed with heart failure. That 78-year-old woman was still in the same chair in which her daughter had left her the day before. It is absolutely disgraceful how our people are treated in this State under the policies of this Government. Her daughter spoke of how her mother did not even have access to a trolley, how she was not able to get any sleep the night before, take any rest or take the weight off her hips or her back. That is what is happening under this Government's watch.

This is just one of hundreds of examples we could recount on the floor of the Dáil today. The reality is that I have absolutely no confidence in the Minister or the Government tackling the hospital and trolley crisis. Why? Because it has missed targets again and again. There are record numbers on trolleys, botched recruitment schemes, soaring waiting lists and the Government is stumbling from one disaster to another. Today, we learn again of the delayed discharges across our hospital network. A strategic plan is needed to tackle overcrowding. Does the Government have one? Of course, it does not. The ESRI told us 2,500 additional beds are needed but the Government does not have a plan to deliver them. To make matters worse, it did not even provide funding in the two most recent budgets for a single additional acute bed across our hospital network. I ask a simple question on behalf of all those 12,000 people who spent time on trolleys last month. Why is the Government so incapable of getting even the basics right in tackling a national scandal that has plagued the State for more than two decades?

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue on healthcare in Ireland. On behalf of the Government, and I am sure all Deputies in the House would share this, we commend all the staff within the HSE and the health service who work so diligently 365 days of the year, are totally committed to our people and are providing as best a service as they can. The Government is committed to supporting that. I will turn to some facts. There is no question about it that there are cases. The Deputy has highlighted a couple of them. I do not have the background detail to those but I turn to the facts of what Government is actually doing. We are investing record funding in our health service. The Government has allocated €23.6 billion net to the health budget for this year; current and capital. That is an extra €5.6 billion and 32% over the original net budget allocation for 2020. These are the facts of what Government is doing. More than 20,000 net additional staff have been hired into our health service since the beginning of 2020. This includes 6,281 nurses and midwives, 3,177 health and social care professionals and 1,948 doctors and dentists. These are the real facts. In the three years since the Government has come in, 2020, 2021 and 2022 have seen the biggest staff increases in the HSE since it was established. Those are the facts. That is what is being done and 2023 continues to show extremely large increases in that space.

The Deputy spoke about acute beds. I ask him to turn to the facts and recognise what has been done. As of mid-March, 970 new acute hospital beds had been opened nationally since 2020. By the end of this year, the HSE is due to have added 1,179 beds against a target of 1,146. We now have 323 adult critical care beds, which is an increase of 65 beds or 25% since 2020. The Department of Health and the HSE are planning a refresh of the 2018 health service capacity review, which was scheduled following the Central Statistics Office review, and that will be done and released later this year. Overall, as part of national development plan, NDP, funding, the health sector has an allocation of €5.657 billion for the period 2021 to 2025, which is an 11% increase on funding year-on-year. This week, more than 500 health capital projects and programmes across the State and the sector are under way at various stages of development. The capital programme for 2023 is being developed and the HSE Capital Plan 2023 has been published by the Minister. That health capital plan in 2023 will help with the construction and equipping of healthcare facilities. It is worth €967 million with a further €50 million provided for capital infrastructure resulting from Covid-19 actions and an additional €10 million for income generated in 2022.

Those are the facts of what Government is doing and investing in our health service. There is no question that there will be instances in hospitals across the country where people will spend longer in chairs or on trolleys than they should. Our job as a Government is to scale up the health service and the resources within the HSE and the Department of Health and that is actually what we are doing. We are underpinning that by a capital plan that further expands the health infrastructure we have for care within the community. I have outlined the facts but what I have not heard from Sinn Féin, bar criticism of apparent Government inaction, is what its alternative plans are in this space. I have told the Deputy about the increased capacity and staff numbers, which are at record levels, between nurses, doctors, midwives, dentists, and right the way through. That is actually happening now. Where cases present, and I am aware of them myself, hospitals have to do everything they can to make sure that waiting times for patients are reduced to the bare minimum.

These are not instances. A total of 11,856 patients spent time on trolleys last month. If a person is 75 years of age and is admitted to the accident and emergency department, the average waiting time before he or she is admitted is 13 hours. It is an absolute disgrace; it is a scandal. The Minister talks about facts; I will give him facts. The Government promised beds three years ago; they still have not been delivered. It promised 10,000 members of staff in the health service; last year just above half of that number was delivered. The real facts are that there were 11,856 patients in the month of May on hospital trolleys. This figure is higher than in the depths of winter in January of this year when the number of patients on trolleys broke all the records we had seen before. The Minister is somehow normalising that, just as he has normalised homelessness. It is not acceptable. Whether it is our mother or grandmother, we should never tolerate the fact that a woman was left in hospital suffering from cardiac problems for 24 hours on a chair and not even given a bed. The point I make is that the Government has no plan. Sinn Féin put forward its plan. Deputy Cullinane has outlined our plan. We have showed in our alternative budget what we would do in terms of workforce planning and additional capacity. Not one additional acute bed did the Government provide for in the two most recent budgets. The reason we have record numbers on trolleys is the Government's inability to deal with this crisis; it is just making it worse.

Hear, hear.

Hear, hear.

I have outlined what the facts are with regard to investment and what this Government is doing. I remind the Deputy and his Sinn Féin colleagues they have opposed every budget we have brought forward and every measure with regard to help. In relation to 2023, funding of €443 million is being allocated to tackle waiting lists-----

They have gone up.

-----and 2022 was the first year the numbers on waiting lists fell since 2015. Our job is to support our hospital network and care in the community by providing additional resources. As I said, there are more now more people working in the HSE, including more doctors, more nurses-----

More people on trolleys, more people on waiting lists.

Please Deputy.

More people dying as a result.

Let the Minister answer, please.

Okay.

There are more doctors, nurses and healthcare staff than ever before. Record numbers are there. Is the situation perfect? Of course, it is not. All of us have cases raised with us where incidents have happened that are intolerable; there is no question about that. We could also talk about the health outcomes in Ireland. Look at the outcomes over the past 20 to 25 years-----

The time is up now.

-----in cardiac care and oncology and survival rates as well. Ireland compares very well.

There are 12,000 on trolleys.

It compares very well.

It is disgraceful.

The investment this Government is making is clear for people to see. What is also clear to see is the lack of an alternative-----

The Government has no plan.

-----plan from Sinn Féin.

The Government does not even have a plan.

Deputy Duncan Smith is next.