The current healthcare crisis needs a national forum to tackle it, Fine Gael’s Colm Burke has said. 

The Cork North Central TD said such a forum would give staff the opportunity to highlight “glitches” in the provision of healthcare. 

“The whole idea of a healthcare forum is for a consultation to bring everyone on board and to have both consultants, nurses, GPs, the nursing home care sector - I’m talking about a whole range of people,” he told Newstalk. 

“But also the Department of Health, the HSE and even the Health Committee from the Oireachtas. 

“I think we all need to sit down around the table and see where are the glitches in the system? How can we improve it?” 

File photo shows a patient on a trolley in a hospital A&E. Picture by: Josie Elias / Stockimo / Alamy Stock Photo

At one point last week, there were 931 patients waiting on trolleys in Irish hospitals and numerous accounts of patients waiting for long periods of time before being seen by staff.

From today, Emergency Department patients from University Hospital Limerick will be transferred to Ennis General Hospital in order to try and ease overcrowding. 

Speaking to The Hard Shoulder on Friday, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said that the Government was implementing a programme of long-term reform to the health service. 

“We’re in the middle of the single biggest expansion of our public service and reform of our public service there has ever been,” he said. 

“So, over the last three years we have record beds, record diagnostics, record workforce. 

“We’ve authorised the building of several new hospitals and we’re building up critically, an entire new community healthcare service because many, probably most, of the solutions to the ED pressures are not found in the emergency departments.”

Main image: Ambulances outside the Mater Hospital. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews