“Just A Few More Weeks Until We Can Forget About This Until Next Winter”

MINISTER for Poor Health Stephen Donnelly has eased concern amongst the public by confirming the pressure threatening to collapse the health service will only continue for another few weeks at which point the government can get back to ignoring it until it occurs again at the exact same time later this year.

“Egghead said it’s just a case of waiting around until this A&E thing will die down – the chaos will die down I mean, not the patients… well fingers crossed,” confirmed a spokesperson for Stephen Donnelly, who is excited at the prospect of not having to pretend they’re really trying to undo the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael vandalism against the health service.

“You won’t know yourself. A few weeks from now the HSE will be returned to its natural ‘slowly collapsing’ form. And then sure blink and it’ll be winter and ‘we’re dealing with legacy capacity deficits’ time again,” added the spokesperson.

In a matter of weeks failing to heed warnings from the health groups months ago about measures that could lessen the strain on the health service caused by Covid-19, RSV and flu while also ignoring experts stating that building capacity in ‘step-down’ facilities such as community care and rehab facilities could bring an end to trolleys will feel like ancient history until the same failures and warnings are brought up again next winter.

“Sure there will be the odd crying parent on social media or TV begging for their child to get a routine operation that has a 5-year waiting list throughout the year but that heat isn’t as big as the annual ‘winter chaos that came out of nowhere trolleygeddon,” added the source.

Meanwhile, in a rare example of cooperation the Dept of Health and HSE have pledged to combat the loss of nearly 9,000 hospital beds while the country’s population grew by one million people by issuing dozens of ‘legacy capacity deficits’ press releases.