Ireland’s health service is not fit for purpose and it is essential that people understand that the current emergency “is not simply a temporary winter crisis or a result of a perfect storm of Covid, flu and respiratory illnesses”, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said.

According to the IMO, there is a “very real likelihood that some patients will have died as a result of avoidable delays in the system in recent weeks”.

Furthermore, it is even more likely that further deaths and delayed diagnoses will occur because some people who should present at emergency departments (EDs) “will not now do so because of fears of what they have recently seen”.

The IMO also emphasised that these issues are not limited to EDs and are instead “a reflection of a wider problem” within the health service.

“The real issue is that successive governments have accepted as ‘good enough’ a health service which was, and is, demonstrably unfit for purpose - where almost a million patients are stuck on waiting lists, where vacancies exist for almost 1,000 consultant posts, where chaotic scenes in EDs are now routine and where staff face unprecedented levels of burnout, stress and low morale,” commented chairman of the IMO’s consultant committee, Dr Matthew Sadlier.

He pointed out that years of underinvestment in both hospital and community healthcare infrastructure has resulted in a health service that will always be vulnerable to any increase in demand. He also insisted that the only thing that has prevented “complete chaos” within the health system in recent weeks is the “herculean efforts of our doctors and other healthcare professionals”.

Dr Sadlier insisted that the health service is “already demanding too much from frontline staff”. Furthermore, it cannot fill almost 1,000 consultant posts “because it refuses to compete in the worldwide market for such sought-after talent”.

This is at a time when the health service is also facing a scarcity of GPs “because it has treated GPs as workhorses on which endlessly increasing demands can be foisted rather than valuable resources that need support and investment”.

“The sad reality is that without radical action, the only certainty is that the chaos of January 2023 will recur and perhaps sooner than anyone would expect,” Dr Sadlier added.