Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall TD has described today’s record high levels of hospital overcrowding as disgraceful, predictable and avoidable.
Deputy Shortall was commenting on figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation which show that the number of people on trolleys and wards awaiting hospital beds has risen to a new high of 677.
“This latest trolley crisis is a national disgrace and is intolerable for both patients and staff – but it is also absolutely predictable. After a summer when our health services were on a knife-edge, it was inevitable that winter flu and other seasonal illnesses would push our hospitals beyond breaking point,” Deputy Shortall said. Deputy Shortall proposed the following immediate steps to alleviate this national emergency:
Deputy Shortall added:“We need to end the annual New Year trolley crisis once and for all and the only way to do that is to get beyond quick fixes. The Sláintecare plan published in May of last year by a cross-party Oireachtas committee which I chaired set out a fully costed ten-year road map to overhaul our broken health system. Instead of acting swiftly to put this plan in place, the government has squandered the past seven months with little practical progress made.”
Image: Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation demonstrate.