Gleeson on the Late Late

Appearing on RTE's Late Late Show, hosted by Pat Kenny, on Friday, 17 March, Brendan Gleeson made the following remarks (edited version):Brendan Gleeson: My recent bugbear is the health system and I have become increasingly distraught of what's happening in the A&E situation in the hospital where my own parents both of whom have gone in (to Beaumont Hospital) and my mother in law has been recently in, had to go through the system.
Pat Kenny: And what happened to them?
BG: Well basically, the staff (there) are immense in the place, the people, the cleaners, the nurses, the doctors who are working in those places. (But) it's like a military field hospital. They're absolutely out on their feet. They are doing everything possible to alleviate the suffering and the pain that's there but systematically, bureaucratically, the place is a disgrace, I mean it's a war crime what's happening in there. Old people particularly are being left on trolleys ad nausium until they, you know, some of whom have died, we've heard, in recent years.
PK: From your own personal experience, what happened? How was your parents……..
BG:  My dad was in there for I think about four or five days, a number of years ago. It was such a hideous experience (for him) that the last time, (then) we nearly lost him because he was so reluctant to go through the A&E experience (again). He very nearly went, he was very close to dying because he could not face what was going in there.
My mother was in there for three or four days and there was one toilet in the A&E in Beaumont Hospital. The indignity of it was unspeakable but there were two other people there. The three of them got together and at one stage one of them had gone to the toilet, and a nurse came up and tried to sweep away the trolley that this woman had been on for two days.  My mum had to put down her hand and say, you're not taking that trolley because she's only gone into the toilet. Now this is where we're making billions.
Now this has been going on and on an on for like years and years.
There are people here whose parents are going to die in disgusting circumstances. The staff are keeping the people as much as they can in some sort of human situation but this is absolutely disgusting.  John O'Shea of Goal should come into Ireland and we'll give him some charity money and let him sort out what they are doing to our own people.
I want to ask here and now that anybody, if they don't sort this thing out in three to six months, anybody who votes for this crowd to get back in next time might as well kill themselves. I'll be honest with you, I don't think much of your crowd either.
It's disgusting that we are allowing people to die when we have billions, we have billions.
A baboon could sort this blood thing out you know and the fact at the moment, that Mary Harney and all this shower….
The oncology department (at the hospital), Michael Martin's name on a plaque (in) the oncology department where my mother in law was dying. There were people trying to fight for life and cling on to hope beside people who were dead and this moron's name was on a plaque saying the oncology suite was opened by Micheál Martin, when he screwed the place from the time he went in until the time he left.
Referring to the Boston v Berlin debate, started by Mary Harney, where she said we needed to chose between the high regular/social protection model of “Berlin” contrasted with the low regulation and low social protection model of “Boston”, Brendan Gleeson said:
The first time I went to Chicago I saw people on the streets, I could not believe it. A magnificent city, with people who were dumped on the streets because of no medical insurance. Now, I couldn't get over it. I thought this is hideous, it's horrible and I kind of thanked my lucky stars of being at home here in a place where that wasn't that extreme. We're coming to the stage where that's where we're going.π