It was recently revealed that University Hospital Galway has the longest waiting list for outpatient appointments of all hospitals in the State. Over 51,000 people are currently waiting to be seen at UHG.
Adrian Curran, People Before Profit representative for Galway, has laid out some steps his party would take to address this dire situation.
“People Before Profit have been calling for increased spending on health so that we reach European levels of bed capacity. For example, we need an extra 200 ICU beds. We have only 3 hospital beds per 1,000 of population compared to 8 in Germany.
“At stages during the pandemic, enormous amounts of public money have been given to the owners of private hospitals for the use of their facilities to paper over the cracks in the public system. We are now left with nothing to show for it except the same broken, under-resourced public health system we had before the pandemic. We should end the two-tier health system and take private hospitals into public control, integrating them into one National Health System, which is free at the point of use and treats people according to medical need, not the size of their wallet.
“All healthcare staff absolutely must be given proper pay and conditions. The nurses, doctors, cleaners, porters, security guards and so on in our health system are heroes who are too often forced to work in poor conditions for low pay. They deserve a living wage, especially now in the face of spiralling costs of housing and living.”