I noted with concern the publication of Public Health Scotland’s A&E waiting times at Inverclyde Royal Hospital.

They revealed that waiting times are getting longer and, as reported in the Tele last week, 326 people waited over 12 hours in the IRH’s A&E department last year.

I’ve sat there in the IRH’s A&E department many a time. It’s clear the hard-working nurses and shift doctors were run ragged and are doing their best. But it’s also clear that it’s become a de facto walk-in clinic for many people too.

When nothing and no one else is available in time of crisis, mental health, an addiction episode, or minor ailment, people present in emergency departments in desperate need of help.

READ MORE: Hundreds left waiting for more than 12 hours at Inverclyde Royal A&E, figures reveal

I don’t blame them, but the whole system feels broken in terms of how we support people’s medical needs. If you can’t get a doctor’s appointment for weeks on end, where else do you turn?

The hospital is in desperate need of replacement. Local and former SNP politicians backed that, but now their Scottish Government has frozen all new projects, and I doubt any new hospital is in sight any time soon.  Meanwhile people are sitting in there for 12 hours. It can’t go on like this.

On the topic of local health, I was delighted to read in the Tele that the site of the old Greenock Health Centre, now based in Wellington Street, is being transformed into affordable housing. In an example of good cross-partnership work between the Scottish Government, Inverclyde Council and Sanctuary Scotland, 64 new and affordable homes will take the place of the old health centre on Duncan Street.

My last column in the Tele raised the scale of Scotland’s housing crisis, highlighting that 267 children were included in homelessness applications over the last two years, compared to 67 children just five years ago, according to the Scottish Government’s own figures.

The picture locally looked just as bleak with the recorded number of live homelessness cases having doubled from last year.

READ MORE: 'Scandalous' rise in Inverclyde homelessness as number of children affected doubles

Worryingly, with the Scottish Government’s decision to cut the affordable housing budget by £200 million will make solving this crisis all the more challenging despite the good cross-partnership work being carried out here in Inverclyde.

Think how much more we could achieve if we had a Scottish Government that focussed its energy and money on solving our housing crisis and A&E departments.