Joan slaps down Leo over time it will take to fix A&E
Tánaiste rejects Health Minister’s claim that it will take five years
JOAN Burton has responded sharply to comments by Leo Varadkar, saying she hopes the time taken to solve the A&E crisis ‘wouldn’t be anything like five years’.
She made her comments during a visit to Kilkenny yesterday after her Cabinet colleague, Health Minister Mr Varadkar, said on Thursday that it would need five years of investment in the health system to ‘restore the capacity that was taken out of our hospitals’ by the last government.
Ms Burton said yesterday when questioned on the subject: ‘What we have seen over the last year, partly based on the economic recovery, is a very significant increase in the allocation of funding to the health services. That has allowed us to employ hundreds of extra nurses and doctors, a lot of them being assigned to the front line.’
The Government had a job to do in relation to emergency departments, she said, particularly in relation to allowing older people who have had treatment or a procedure in an acute hospital to move to a step-down facility for recuperation.
‘We’ve had a whole series of extra beds, hundreds of extra beds, being opened and made available, as well as investing in cutting-edge medical technology in all of our different hospitals.
‘It is going to take a bit of time for that to come through but I have to say I hope it wouldn’t be anything like five years in terms of the ED [Emergency department] and I do hope that in terms of the discussions that are ongoing at the moment between the parties, between the HSE and the unions, that it is possible to identify the best and the most efficient way in which to organise ED and use the resources and the very significant additional resources that have been made available.’
She pointed to ‘very good year-end figures’ released this week in relation to the economy, which showed unemployment at 8.8%, as well as the NTMA’s raising of €3billion in funding on the markets at an interest rate of just over 1%.
‘Now the reason Ireland got into its difficulties eight years ago was that nobody would lend to us and, where we could borrow, the cost of lending became prohibitive, so yesterday there were investors, nationally and internationally particularly, queueing up to lend money to Ireland and I think that’s a real vote of confidence in the Irish economy as we head into 2016.’
Yesterday, the Irish Daily Mail detailed how a 72-year-old pensioner had been left waiting more than 50 hours in Beaumont Hospital’s Emergency Department as he waited for a bed.
James Coyle, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, first waited on a chair for more than 24 hours before later being moved to a trolley before waiting a further day.
However, he remained complimentary about the staff at the hospital, who he said were ‘wonderful’.
Beaumont emergency consultant Dr Peader Gilligan said on Thursday that patients were being put at risk due to the difficult environment.
He said: ‘We feel that our ability to provide care is compromised by virtue of the fact that we can’t assess the patient in an appropriate space, therefore the sort of questions we can ask of the patient are somewhat compromised.’
‘Queueing up to lend us money’