A 64-year-old woman was left waiting on a trolley in Tallaght Hospital in Dublin for 76 hours for admission to the stroke ward, a Sinn Féin TD has told the Dáil.
Dublin midwest TD Mark Ward said the woman, who has a history of aneurysms, also had to initially wait for an hour and a half on an ambulance while she had a suspected stroke.
Mr Ward said the woman’s daughter had been in touch with him and was told she also had Alzheimer’s disease. He said the situation “didn’t happen overnight” and was due to “years of mismanagement and lack of political will”.
Sinn Féin put forward a Dáil in the chamber on Tuesday night setting out that it was “widely accepted” that the Government had chosen to underfund the health service in Budget 2024.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly had sought around €2 billion in extra funding for health services next year, but was allocated just €800 million in the budget earlier this month.
[ No cuts to health services next year despite ‘guaranteed deficit’, HSE chief saysOpens in new window ]
[ Health funding row one of many big political challenges on horizonOpens in new window ]
Mr Ward also referenced a separate contact from a constituent, a woman who said she had attended the emergency department in Tallaght Hospital on Sunday with her 17-year-old son “due to his suicidal thoughts and psychotic outbursts” and were left waiting nine hours before he “walked out of the hospital”.
Reading from the email he had received from the woman, Mr Ward said: “Now he won’t go back to the hospital to see the CAMHS doctor that he needs to see as he thinks he will be waiting hours again.
“The mental health service is disgraceful for people. I am at my wits’ end trying to get him the help that he needs.”
The Sinn Féin TD added that this was “not a unique situation” and that he received emails like this “all the time”.
“Because of this Government’s mismanagement of mental health services this situation will happen more often,” he said.
Minister Donnelly acknowledged that some health services were not “delivering” at the level patients must get as well as the individual cases raised by TDs “who are not getting the care they need”.
Mr Donnelly said that most of the State’s health services were being delivered on budget and the main area which was not were hospitals, due to more patients turning up than forecast and medicines and other supplies costing more.
“This is happening in Ireland, this is happening across Europe,” he said.
Mr Donnelly said it was “difficult to forecast” what would happen next year in terms of prices and patient demand.
“A post-Covid surge may well reside leading to a very different level of patients presenting,” he said. “Prices may well correct.”
University Hospital Limerick once again set a new record for patients on trolleys, with 130 people waiting for admission on Monday morning.
There were more patients on trolleys across the hospital than in the emergency department itself, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO).
UHL, which has the worst overcrowding of any Irish hospital, set the previous trolley record of 126 patients waiting for admission, in April 2022.
