At this late stage of the evening I am grateful to you, Sir, for allowing me to raise this matter, the subject of a Private Notice Question I tabled today. I tabled it because I felt an unprecedented warning had been sounded by senior medical staff in one of the most important hospitals in the country and I was a little dismayed when that Private Notice Question was ruled out of order on the grounds of lack of urgency.
Last night the hospital manager of the Meath Hospital, Mr. Eddie Thornhill, admitted that 23 people were being cared for on steel trollies in that hospital yesterday as a result of the health cuts imposed by this Government. Last week 43 beds were closed in that hospital and a further seven beds, according to the hospital administrator, are due to close in the near future. I think the comments of the senior medical staff in the Meath Hospital are worth reading into the record of this House. They are not the comments of a partisan politician or somebody trying to make political capital of an issue. They are a cry from the heart from over-burdened and stressed medical staff who have come to the end of their tether and can cope no more in a hospital system deprived of urgently needed resources. I want to quote from today's Irish Independent:
Senior Registrar Dr. John Manson complained bitterly that so many beds had been closed down because of health spending cuts. He said that lives were being put at risk because of the measure: "We have patients who had emergency operations during the night being put back on trollies."
Another senior registrar, Dr. John Black said that elderly patients could be in danger of a fall from a trolley, or developing bed sores on the hard surface.
Dr. Manson confirmed: "It is an unfortunate position that people could die. We have already had a number of near misses with patients, being recognised to be very seriously ill having to lie on a trolley with major bleedings problems and no beds available."
Dr. Manson said that the problems had increased in the past few months. "We kept on working under these conditions because we were under the mistaken impression that somebody or the Government would see what was happening and do something about it. But nothing is being done."
Dr. Manson added: "There is a lack of realisation as to what the health cuts actually mean in the hospitals. We are not being allowed to treat our patients properly."
They are the comments of the senior medical staff charged with the responsibility of providing health care in an important national hospital. Unfortunately, the problem is not confined to one hospital. The entire health service is on the verge of collapse and the Government, and the Minister in particular, have nothing on offer but the prospect of more cuts and further closures.
Since Fianna Fáil came to office, between full hospital closures and bed closures in those hospitals that Fianna Fáil have not closed something approaching a staggering 4,000 beds have now been taken out of service. There has been a consequent job loss for people engaged in the health services numbering at least 2,000 at the latest count.
One must ask: what does it take, what evidence needs to be provided, who needs to make the appeal before the Minister realises the extent of the crisis in the health services? When will he change course? My words of exhortation are ignored, but can the Minister continue to ignore the senior medical staff? As a society we have had some difficult decisions to make. We are faced with a financial crisis, but the question we must now address is: who is to pay for the financial crisis we have? Surely the answer cannot be that we resolve our financial difficulties on the backs of the weakest, the most vulnerable and the sick.
All the cutters in this House, be they on the Government benches or on the Opposition benches in Fine Gael or the Progressive Democrats, have now got to answer this dilemma. They have put forward as a virtue the notion of cost-cutting, the notion of savaging our health budgets and have exhorted the Minister to sterner and further cuts in the future. They now must examine their consciences, as the Minister must because he is the person with ultimate responsibility for the health and well-being of the people of the nation.
I should like to put one simple and direct question to the Minister: what is he going to do to save our health services? Like Nero of old, is he going to stand idly by and, in the words of the medical people at risk and allow some people to people at rick and allow some people to die and be forgotten? The crisis now must be recognised by the Minister and I exhort him to look at the problem in the Meath Hospital because that is a reflection of the real crisis that exists in every major hospital here.
