Over the past few days we have heard of a 101 year old woman who was on a hospital trolley in Dublin for 27 hours and today there is news that a 100 year old woman spent 25 hours on a trolley in Limerick. To add to those horror stories there was a 79 year old man with various serious health conditions who spent 82 hours in a hospital in Galway over the weekend before he was given a hospital bed.
Despite the fact that a total of 74 million Euro of a special allocation was set aside especially to deal with overcrowding in our hospitals in April of this year, the problem seems to be getting worse. It is easy to label this as the politics of outrage but these are real people. It could be anyone’s mother or father, relative or friend, and it is just not good enough. Minister Varadkar is sleepwalking his way through this national scandal and he seems to be getting a free pass from the national media while at the same time, this chaos continues. The nurses and staff at these overcrowded hospitals are doing their best and are at their wits end trying to cope, but the HSE and the Minister are showing no leadership on this serious matter at all. What we are talking about here is the treatment of ill elderly people who have worked all their lives and paid their taxes in this country. Surely they are entitled to some dignity when they go to a hospital for treatment. I make no apologies for highlighting this matter once again and I will continue to do so until we have a proper service for the people who deserve it.