RESPONDING to measures announced by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly during his visit this week to University Hospital Limerick (UHL), the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has cautiously welcomed plans to stem the tide of problems in UHL.
However, INMO assistant Director of Industrial Relations for the Mid West and North West, Mary Fogarty, said: “As a union we have long been sounding the alarm and exposing the scale of overcrowding in University Hospital Limerick.”
“According to our INMO trolley figures, over 6,579 patients have gone without a bed in UHL since the beginning of 2024. In 2014, ago the annual overcrowding figure for UHL was 6,150. The problems in UHL have been allowed to escalate to an unsafe and unacceptable level.”
Ms Fogarty said that the Health Minister met a group of over 20 INMO members who work in the hospital “who gave him a very grave account of how difficult it is for nurses working in University Hospital Limerick”.
“The only measure of success in UHL with be a permanent reduction in the number of patients on trolleys. On many occasions we have had specialist measures introduced in UHL which saw a temporary reprieve in overcrowding only for the problems within the hospital to worsen. Strong, sustained and tangible action is required to end the unacceptable suffering of patients and staff.”
