Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has insisted that this winter’s trolley crisis is different from previous ones - and argued that what we are seeing now “doesn’t happen every year”.
The Fianna Fáil TD also refused to answer whether he thought the case of a person aged 70 on a trolley for 57 hours was “borderline elder abuse”.
Trolley numbers usually peak in the first week of the new year following the return of services after the Christmas break.
The number of people waiting on beds reached record levels earlier this week, with 931 people on trolleys.
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The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) reported that this number had dropped to 535 on Friday morning.
It was put to Minister Donnelly during a press conference in Dublin on Friday afternoon that when he was the opposition health spokesperson, he lambasted the fact that high trolley numbers were blamed on the flu.
He said in 2018 that people were “sick of hearing this is down to the winter and flu season”.
However, Minister Donnelly said that this trolley crisis is different from other trolley crises.
“It's fair to say that what we're seeing this year doesn't happen every year,” he said.
“What we're seeing this year is a combination of flu COVID and RSV.
“We haven't had that before.
“The first two winters we had a COVID, there wasn't really a flu season. So the system was able to manage some RSV - there wasn't a big wave of RSV - and COVID. This year we have all three.
“What we're seeing this year, unfortunately, is new.”
In 2018, Minister Donnelly said that figures showing that one in three people on trolleys were over the age of 75 was “borderline elder abuse”.
It was put to him that there have been reports of a person aged 75 on a trolley for 57 hours.
He would not, however, state if this was “borderline elder abuse”.
Minister Donnelly continued: “It is certainly completely unacceptable. Nobody wants to see this.
“We heard Stephen Mulvaney this morning say it's not acceptable to him. It's not acceptable to me or Government. It’s not something that we should see.”
Minister Donnelly said that the number of people on trolleys has nearly halved over the last number of days.
The number of hospitals that reported no people on trolleys or people waiting less than 24 hours for a bed has also increased, he said.
The Minister also said that the presence of consultants and other doctors in hospitals this weekend will be watched closely over the coming days.
“It is something that will help with discharges,” he said.
“We know that we have a weekly pattern whereby the trolley numbers tend to peak on a Monday or a Tuesday. Really what we want to see now this weekend and in the coming weekend, cognizant that many are already doing it, is those senior decision-makers on site but critically with the discharge options that they need as well.”
