Donnelly to update Cabinet on pressures faced by hospitals

The Cabinet is to be updated on the pressures hospitals are facing after the Health Minister warned that the situation is likely to get worse in the coming weeks.

Nurses union the INMO counted a record high of 931 people waiting on hospital trolleys yesterday, with 767 waiting for a bed in emergency departments (EDs).

After visiting two hospital EDs in Dublin on Tuesday, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said it was unacceptable that some people are sleeping on floors and waiting in chairs for a bed.

He said he would be updating the Cabinet, and meeting with senior HSE officials on Friday.

Mr Donnelly said that despite “unprecedented” permanent investment in the healthcare sector – including 950 extra hospital beds, extra ICU capacity and community beds, and thousands of additional staff – “a perfect storm” of factors has used these additional resources.

Infection prevention control measures around Covid has used up beds, and a huge wave of RSV is now in decline, but Mr Donnelly said they want to see it continue to fall further.

Speaking outside Beaumont Hospital on Tuesday night, Mr Donnelly said: “But what I’m hearing this week, what I was hearing last week, and what I’m hearing here today and then in Vincent’s today, is that the flu wave is very severe, it’s hit earlier than it normally would.

“In spite of unprecedented additional public capacity we put in, and we will continue to add that, this perfect storm of Covid, RSV, the flu, unfortunately has put pressure on us here in Ireland, in the UK as well.”

Mr Donnelly said the pressure on hospitals “is likely to get worse” as the HSE does not believe that the flu wave has yet peaked.

He said: “We’ll have more up-to-date figures tomorrow and the following day, we’ll have live indicative figures for this week in two days’ time that will really help us understand where we’re at with Covid, where we’re at with the flu.”

He said the use of all available private capacity – private hospitals, private diagnostics – as well as home care support, and additional hours by GPs are being provided.

He said that discharge options to community nursing units and home support beds are also being considered.

The HSE has asked those who need medical care or assessment “to consider all options” before going to an A&E during what it said will be “the busiest ever period experienced by the health service”.

INMO general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said nurses were treating patients in “inhumane and often unsafe conditions” and called on a mask mandate to be introduced in congregated settings.

But Mr Donnelly said that chief medical officer Breda Smyth had not advised that such a mandatory mask rule was required.

“The public health advice to Government, to me at the moment, it is not a move to mask mandates, but obviously we will keep the situation under review on a daily and on a weekly basis,” he said.

The Cabinet is due to meet at 11am on Wednesday.