Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I raise again University Hospital Limerick. We welcomed the Taoiseach there on Friday. It was important he came to visit the hospital but since then we saw 109 patients on trolleys on Monday, a record for this year so far, and 96 on trolleys today. That gives a grand total of 2,320 patients on trolleys from the beginning of the year. The statistics do not tell of the pain and hurt of all the people on trolleys but paint a picture of things continuing to get worse week in and week out, month in and month out. The starker statistic is that when Fine Gael came to power in 2011, 3,500 patients were on hospital trolleys in that year. In the year just ended, it was 18,000. We have had a letter from 87 doctors working in the hospital making it absolutely clear they are entirely unhappy with the current circumstances and calling for radical change. When will people recognise that fundamental changes in senior management are required? How much worse does it have to get before that change is acted upon by the Government? I am glad to say HIQA is there today, having arrived this morning. After the last HIQA report, there should have been fundamental change. It was a damning report of the failures of hospital management. Sinn Féin was clear in calling for such fundamental change to happen. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government has not acted to date. The last time I raised this I was told not to talk about overnight solutions. With all due respect to both Government parties, Fine Gael has had 12 years and Fianna Fáil has had seven budgets. The crisis is ongoing and has been the damning failure of Government policy for far too long. I call for an urgent debate.