Health Minister Leo Varadkar is to be called upon to relocate the Regional Maternity Hospital from its current site on the Ennis Road to the University Hospital Limerick (UHL) campus in Dooradoyle.
This follows the unanimous support for a notice of motion submitted by Limerick City East Labour Party councillor Elena Secas at last week’s meeting of Limerick City and County Council.
When a similar motion was proposed last March, the Department of Health said there was limited funding available for such capital projects up to 2018 and that significant investment has been made at the maternity hospital over the previous year.
However Cllr Secas insists that the quality of health care and the access to it in the maternity hospital is a huge issue and its relocation to the main hospital campus is a matter of urgency.
“The building is over 50 years old; its facilities and working environment are relatively poor and, despite being the fifth busiest of the 19 maternity units in the country, it has no intensive care or high dependency units,” she stated.
“Because it has no blood bank, mothers in critical condition have to be transferred to UHL for treatment and/or investigations, which poses a huge concern for patient safety and separates mothers from their newborn babies in many cases for several days,” she added.
Fianna Fail councillor James Collins added his support to Cllr Secas’s proposal and hoped that it would be a case of “new motion, different answer”.
He also called for an emergency plan to be implemented at UHL to deal with the current crisis at the hospital’s emergency department and pointed out that “real investment” would have to happen if the maternity hospital was to be moved to Dooradoyle.
Fine Gael councillor Maria Byrne said it was “more appropriate” to have the maternity hospital based at the Dooradoyle campus.
Sinn Fein councillor for Adare-Rathkeale, Ciara McMahon, expressed concern over the fact that ten people were currently waiting for emergency bypasses at UHL.
“I know of one person who has a 100 per cent blockage and they cannot get a bypass.
“There are too many pushing pens and not enough pushing trolleys. I know from my experience abroad that you would be treated much faster in Kenya,” she claimed.
Fine Gael councillor Liam Galvin described the current situation at UHL as a “disaster” while Anti-Austerity Alliance councillor slammed the Government for its “botched” centralisation of A&E services in the region.
