THE Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar, said he was “stunned” and “amazed” at criticism directed at him by Sinn Féin over his recent visits to Accident and Emergency wards around the country.
The minister was reacting to comments levelled at him by Deputy Seán Crowe who described Minister Varadkar’s visits to A&E wards as a “pointless public relations exercise” that would “frustrate and bring cold comfort to patients on trolleys and deliver little if any administrative change to the hospitals he visited”.
The Dublin South West TD said that over 4,000 patients were on Accident and Emergency hospital trolleys or chairs during the month of December and that this number would likely increase in the month of January, “regardless of the minister’s whistle-stop PR tour”.
“In the month of December there were over 4,000 patients on trolleys and chairs in hospital Accident and Emergency wards right across the State,” Deputy Crowe claimed.
“In Dublin hospitals, there were 1,318 patients on trolleys.
“Last year, Taoiseach Enda Kenny had the brass neck to blame Tallaght Hospital staff on a crisis in Accident & Emergency and the awful scenario where an elderly 91-year-old patient was left on a trolley for 29 hours.
“He conveniently ignored his own Government’s disastrous cuts to health funding, the removal of thousands of beds from the hospital system, the shortage of key staff, the lack of step down facilities, the failure to roll out primary care facilities and the lengthening waiting list for life-changing operations.
“Minister Varadkar’s jaunt around the Accident and Emergency wards will be viewed by many staff and patients as more of the same posturing,” Deputy Crowe added.
“There is wall to wall media coverage of the minister expressing sympathy and all the time distancing the Fine Gael /Labour administration from the fallout of his policies.
“It seems to be a lot easier for Government politicians to blame hard-working hospital staff or seriously ill patients for getting sick, rather than blaming the broken health system that their Government has concocted.
“The chief executive officer in Tallaght Hospital publicly warned back in 2013 that patient safety would be put at risk by budget cuts.
“What is happening in the health service is a direct manifestation of a continuity of cuts.
“Minister Varadkar will no doubt have lots to mull over this week after seeing some of the difficulties and the challenges facing hospital staff on a daily basis but no one has any confidence that his journey will deliver any change in direction or any relief for long suffering patients and hospital frontline staff.”
In a response issued to Southside People, Minister Varadkar said Sinn Féin “never ceased to amaze me”.
“But I’m stunned that Sean Crowe thinks a Minister for Health should not be allowed to see the situation at first hand,” the minister stated. “Then again, it does explain why the overcrowding situation in Northern Ireland, where Sinn Féin is in government, is so bad and why the Ulster Hospital has described the situation in its wards as ‘extreme’, due to overcrowding and bed closures.
“There is no overnight solution to overcrowding in the Republic,” the minister added. “We have managed to keep trolley numbers below last year’s levels by investing an extra €117m specifically to address overcrowding, opening new beds and re-opening closed beds, and have brought the waiting time for the Fair Deal package down to just two weeks, compared to eight weeks for a care package in Northern Ireland.
“I also think it’s disappointing that Sean Crowe does not acknowledge the relatively good performance of Tallaght Hospital so far during this very period,” the minister continued. “Tallaght succeeded in opening and staffing 12 additional beds funded by Government and implemented the escalation directive, meaning that Tallaght had between three and nine patients on trolleys which is a dramatic improvement in conditions.”