Rose Conway-Walsh: Mayo University Hospital in deep crisis

Geur maith agat, Lásse Cahirlech. Minister, like my colleague David Cullinan, I want to discuss the Seilta Hospital Group and in particular Mayo University Hospital. The Mayo University Hospital is in a deep crisis at the moment, both in terms of the 15,000 people who are waiting for treatment there and also in terms of access to A&E. People are waiting hours and hours without treatment. It is not good enough in this day and age and it is not good enough to say, well, we spend X amount of money. We need accountability within the system, but also we need the resources to be targeted. We have built enormous primary care centres, even in parts of Mayo, and yet we cannot have access to a GP and we cannot have access to proper healthcare. Minister, there is something gone badly wrong. We need the capital investment in Mayo University Hospital. There is no point in telling us we are going to get a 2024, 2025. In Belmolet Hospital, again, we have not got the capital investment there. That is obviously having a knock-on effect on the step-down services for Mayo University Hospital. Minister, I suppose I should be glad you are in the chair tonight, or you would be adding your voice to it. I do acknowledge the Seilta Group. I am a resident myself that accesses the Seilta Group. It is important to have that on the record. I wish to thank all the deputies for raising this important issue today. The Seilta Group serves a relatively older and dispersal rural population in Connacht Ulster, of its vital importance to those communities. I should have said at the outset that I am taking this this evening on behalf of Minister Donnelly. The group has six hospitals across seven sites and EG congestion. Waiting times and other challenges vary across the group over time. There is a significant capital investment in Seilta underway or in planning, which I will outline shortly. However, I acknowledge at the outset the scale of the challenge facing our emergency department as we head into what is expected to be a difficult winter. I also agree with Deputy Farrell there. I want to acknowledge and thank the emergency department staff for their ongoing commitment to delivering high standards of care to ED patients, while acknowledging the distress that overcoming causes to patients, their families and to frontline staff. Minister Donnelly published the HSE Winter Preparedness Plan for 2021-2022 on the 15th November. The plan centres on three core objectives, ED avoidance, patient flow and hospital egress to mitigate the expected challenges in providing emergency care this winter, while also continuing to respond to COVID-19. We are investing £77 million in this year's winter plan, in addition to the 2021 funding which has been retained. This year's winter plan recognises that a whole system response is required and outlines how the HSE proposes to manage winter challenges across primary care, community and acute care, including measures to allow the public system to access private healthcare capacity. The acute hospital capacity identified the need for significant additional bed capacity. Since January 2020, we have added around 800 acute beds. Projects of note in the sale of the hospital include 10 new beds in Mayo, 26 in Leto Kenny, with a further 23 due before the year-end. Portioncola has two projects underway to provide 62 beds. Sligo is building for two additional 21-bed wards, and University Hospital Galway has 12 cardiac beds currently being built, as well as the new radiation oncology unit. Handover of the primary ED in Galway is expected in early 2022, and Maryland Park's two new orthopaedic theatres will be operational shortly. Roscommon's specialist rehab unit has been delayed due to COVID, but work continues to progress this project. These projects will provide the bed capacity to improve patient flow through the hospitals and improve ED performance. I accept that our waiting lists are far too big. Many patients are waiting for an unacceptable long period of time. Our waiting lists were too long before the pandemic but have worsened due to COVID and the cyber attack. We are taking action to address this. For 2022, an additional allocation of £250 million will be used to fund additional activity in both the public and the private sector to reduce hospital and community waiting lists. The additional funding means that there will be a budget of £350 million available to support vital initiatives to improve access to acute hospital and community health services. I suppose there is an acknowledgement within that script and I want to acknowledge that there is tremendous pressure in all of our hospitals right across the group. The staff are working incredibly hard, but the families that are needing that access to care, for me to read out tonight what beds have arrived and what are coming on does not give them the care or does not give them the staff that they need. Funding is not the issue here at the moment. It is really hard to recruit staff into clinical posts and that is a huge problem, I would say, Deputy Kenny, that you are facing in Sligo. Thank you, Minister. Minister, the people in Mayo deserve better and they need better at this point. When you talk about caring for staff, I absolutely want to acknowledge the Trojan work that staff do, but why do not we do exit interviews with all the nurses that are leaving? Why do not we offer contracts that are flexible to meet the family needs of nurses as well? Why are we going around the world recruiting nurses when only 4% of nurses who do pre-nursing PLC courses then go on to be nurses? The pathways are not there for our own people. Thank you, Dr. Wythe. The Health Service Capacity Review in 2018 was clear on the need for a major investment in additional capacity in both acute hospitals and community, combined with a wide-scale reform on the manner and the location of where health services are provided. Approximately 800 beds have been provided on a permanent basis over the number available at the end of 2019. We have hired more than 6,000 staffed doctors, nurses and midwives therapists since last summer. On 7 October Minister Donnelly published an acute waiting list action plan aimed at mitigating the impact of the pandemic and the cyber attack on scheduled care activity this year. Minister Donnelly is also establishing a ministerial task force to oversee long-term multi-annual plan to address this enormous challenge. Minister Donnelly has stated that reducing waiting lists will be a priority for us throughout 2022. The Department, the HSE and the National Treatment Purchase Fund are focusing on improving access to elective care in order to reduce waiting times for patients. These plans include increased use of private hospitals, funding weekend and evening work in the public hospitals, funding see and treat services with minor procedures and provide at the same time an outpatient consultation, providing virtual clinics and increasing capacity in the public hospital system. It has accepted that a key part of the solution for the sale of the group is additional beds and the expansion of facilities. Earlier I outlined many of the recent and current developments underway at each of the hospitals across the group. All of these are significant steps in addressing the needs and will provide additional capacity and staff to meet the needs of the population. The Department of Health and the HSE will continue to work with the local group management to further improve patient experience in the Ceilta University Hospital care group. In relation to Porto Yoncola Hospital Deputy Cullinan, those 50 beds have been out of operation for some time now and the additional 12 beds are from in relation to where you could not have their old Victorian style units, but what I am saying is they have not been open for a long number of years.