Not for a moment am I going to downplay the real pressures in too many of our hospitals for too many of our patients in accident and emergency departments. However, it is really important that as an Oireachtas we acknowledge the progress our healthcare workers are making. I can tell the Deputy, and I know he will have seen this himself from talking to them, they are working so hard to bring down the number of patients on trolleys in every hospital. There has been a national response to this situation. Looking at the second half of last year, which is when the new approach was rolled out, we can see there has been a 22% reduction in the number of patients on trolleys. Regarding the most high-risk group of people, who are central to the Deputy's question, there has been a nearly 40% reduction on the figures for the previous year. We have all seen a very important reduction in the number of patients on trolleys through Christmas and the new year and, so far, in January of this year. I am not for a moment suggesting this issue is fixed but it is really important that we acknowledge that the work, the blood, sweat and tears our healthcare professionals are putting into this is working.
The Deputy should rest assured that we are going to continue. We are focusing, in particular, on the hospitals where the greatest delays are. Approximately seven hospitals account for approximately half the patients on trolleys.
More hospitals are now reporting no patients on trolleys and, more importantly, more hospitals are beginning to report that, at the 8 a.m. count, there were no people aged over 75 have been waiting for more than 24 hours. Those are two of the most important things that have to be achieved. To the Deputy's question, approximately 32,000 people die in Ireland every year. Approximately 13,500 of those deaths occur in hospitals. I will come back to the specific numbers regarding emergency departments in my next response.