Hospital problems more basic than need for more money and staff, says Leo Varadkar

There is a more fundamental problem in a number of Irish hospitals than "money and staff", Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has told the Dáil.

Highlighting the situation in Beaumont Hospital he said it currently had 100 delayed discharges and about 30 people on trolleys. In theory if delayed discharges were reduced from 100 to 50 there should be nobody on trolleys.

“However, I know full well that the way that hospital is currently managed and organised, this would not be the case,” he said.

Instead “discharges would slow down and electives would be increased and we would still have people on trolleys in the emergency department, as has been the case every day, except Christmas week, for the past 15 years.”

The emergency department overcrowding crisis was raised a number of times in the Dáil yesterday and Mr Varadkar told TDs there were 298 patients on trolleys yesterday morning, a figure that fell to 217 by lunchtime, with 131 of those on trolleys for more than nine hours.

He said extra beds and nurses were needed and more beds were being opened and more recruitment was taking place but extra beds and nurses was not the full solution.

On trolleys

He said the number of patients on trolleys last week at 525, was the highest in four years when comparing like with like but yesterday “comparing like with like and time of year with time of year, it is at its lowest in seven years”.

Independent TD Finian McGrath said 217 people on trolleys “is not good enough. We need a lasting solution.”

Mr Varadkar acknowledged the problem was “serious, real and cannot go on” but he said it was a “sad reflection on our health service and our politics, on us all, that we have been debating and discussing this for 15 years or more”.

He rejected Opposition claims that “we have some sort of third-world health service”, and said the Irish system was ranked 14th out of 31 countries with significant achievements.

Deal with the issue

During a Fianna Fáil private member’s debate last night the party’s health spokesman

Billy Kelleher

said it was time to deal with the issue in a meaningful way.

He said that the Minister had made “a couple of interventions” but “you can’t just pretend you’re a passive observer, that you’re a spectator, an analyst of the health services.

“You are the person who’s ultimately in charge. You are the person who has to up the stakes and has to get involved in ensuring we have systems in place that every January we don’t have a surge in the number of people waiting on trolleys.”

Mr Varadkar said Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin had also said he should stop being an analyst. The Minister said “perhaps he is concerned that I actually can analyse the problem, that I’m not afraid to comment on the them and face up to them” and that he feared “being shown up”.

Earlier, as nurses protested outside Leinster House, Mr Martin accused Taoiseach Enda Kenny of a “sleeveen response” when the Fianna Fáil leader asked him if he believed emergency department were safe for patients.

Mr Kenny said emergency departments were “not as safe as they ought to be”.