Health:Delegates demanded Government action to improve the health services and referred to the plight of MRSA victims.
Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo) said the situation was so bad in the county's general hospital that the Health and Safety Authority had to be called in last week.
"On Monday, we had 28 seriously ill people lying on trolleys, on Tuesday we had 34 and on Wednesday we had 35 trolleys with patients lined along draughty corridors. In the middle of this chaos, we had elderly patients walking around in their soiled underwear and detox patients hallucinating, some suffering from psychiatric illness."
Sinn Féin, she said, was proposing community health partnerships which would be accountable for the delivery of all healthcare within their geographically defined area. There should be an immediate evaluation of the primary care pilot programme.
"Let Mary Harney and her colleagues in the PDs and Fianna Fáil come along to Mayo General Hospital. Let them look into the eyes of the 85-year-old woman lying on a trolley in a draughty corridor and tell her she has never had it so good. Bertie can tell her to stop whingeing. Michael McDowell and Pat Rabbitte and company can tell her not to worry because, after all, they are cutting the basic rate of tax."
David Cullinane (Waterford) said Sinn Féin in government would make solving the MRSA problem a priority in healthcare.
Anna Prior (Clare) said the Government's long-term health policy suggested that hospitals in Ennis, Monaghan etc would remain under-resourced if right-wing parties were allowed to continue on their way in adopting an American model of privatised healthcare.
Ms Prior said: "We are opposed to the present two-tier system where the State ploughs public money into private hospitals, heavily subsidises private health insurance and pussy-foots around consultants on public salaries who are allowed to continue earning private income in our hospitals."
John Dwyer (Wexford) said: "It is estimated that €150 million is spent annually fighting hospital-related infections, yet if we follow the example of the Dutch government in pursuing a search- and-destroy policy for MRSA, it would cost €261 per person."
