by Kathy Masterson
LIMERICK City and County Council is to seek a meeting with the University of Limerick Hospitals chief executive to discuss the issue of overcrowding in the Accident and Emergency department at the Dooradoyle hospital.
Following a proposal from Sinn Féin councillor Malachy McCreesh, the council also voted in favour of supporting the local nurses and midwives of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) in their industrial action in protest of hospital overcrowding.
Cllr McCreesh also called on the local authority “to demand the intervention of the Health Minister and both Limerick’s Government Ministers to ensure that the additional beds at the A&E in the University Hospital in Dooradoyle are opened immediately”.
He also called for “the immediate expediting of works needed for equipping and staffing of the new Emergency Department at the University Hospital Limerick”, which is due to open in 2016.
Anti-Austerity Alliance councillor Paul Keller said that nurses are working “in a pressure cooker atmosphere”.
He added: “The lack of investment has taken its toll on the health service. The hospital can’t control the number of patients who present to A&E, but it can control the number of medical staff that are available.”
Fianna Fáil councillor Kieran O’Hanlon said it was “intolerable for people working in the caring profession to have to work in these conditions”, and noted: “Funding is a serious issue, but the management of resources is also a serious issue.”
His party colleague James Collins suggested that the council should meet with the hospital chief executive “to discuss the problems facing the hospital and possible solutions”.
Cllr Michael Hourigan of Fine Gael remarked: “To be fair, there’s huge investment gone in Dooradoyle over the last number of years. We can’t help what we inherited and that can’t be solved in a week. In the meantime, the safety of the patients is all-important.”
Anti-Austerity Alliance councillor Cian Prendiville called on the public “to rally behind these nurses to fight for a properly funded health service”.
“Centralisation and the downgrading of Ennis and Nenagh has been a fiasco and is just not working .We’ve got a growing population, but there are less beds in our public hospitals than there were in the 1980s,” commented Labour councillor Joe Leddin.
