Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2022-02-15 ============================================================ Alan Kelly (LAB), Tipperary They are targets that are given out to people as answers. In fairness, we can only take the information that is given to us. In the Taoiseach's constituency at Cork University Hospital today, dangerous levels of overcrowding exist. I have spoken about the situation in University Hospital Limerick on more occasions in the House than I have spoken about any other matter. That situation still obtains today. There are 532 people on trolleys in our hospitals, over 720 vacant consultant posts and 4,500 funded positions that officials in the Department of Health are saying will not be met. These are record statistics going in the wrong direction. This needs to be arrested immediately. Otherwise, we are heading into a full crisis after coming out of such a difficult period in which the health service has done so well. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-02-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2022-02-15