Hospital Overcrowding
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Aidan Farrelly (SD), Kildare North

There were 255. I raise this issue because it appears that this has become an acceptable norm in Naas General Hospital.
Year after year, the same number of patients receiving care on trolleys. The numbers may fall or rise slightly, but it has become something of a predictable crisis. In the same way that young families have to plan early for basics like crèche and school places in Kildare, I ask the Minister of State, the HSE and hospital management team in Naas to plan better for this predictable crisis.
Kildare has a population of 250,000 people. The county has experienced exponential growth in 30 years, more than doubling from the 1990s. In truth, we have been failed by successive Governments who rightly want housing delivered, but have utterly failed in their duty to deliver the necessary social infrastructure required in tandem with housing.
This week the CEO of the HSE spoke on radio about emergency departments being about life threatening situations. I understand the point he was trying to make, but he also said if he was given 220 people being cared for on trolleys every day when he started in the role he would nearly have taken that. We cannot allow that to become the norm and that is what worries me. The 250 people in November 2025 in Naas were deemed suitable for care and admission and needed the level of care that only the hospital could provide, as did the 350 people in November 2024 and the 260 in November 2023.
We do not have other options in Kildare. The out-of-hours services are not there to meet the capacity constraints in our county. I call on the Minister of State to raise this issue with the Minister for Health and ask for a meeting to be convened between the HSE, management and representatives in Kildare North and Kildare South to talk about the issues of fundamental importance when it comes to reducing the number from the mid 200s as much as we can over the next number of years.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09