Nurses stage Limerick work stoppage

More and more people are fed up of politicians and their system. It should also be pointed out that Irish nurses are having to emigrate to find jobs whilst non Irish nurses are hired in hospitals around the country. Billions of euro has been wasted on asylum seekers and immigrants and the Irish health system is suffering. Money that could of been spent on hospitals.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0928/health.html

A four-hour work stoppage has been staged by nurses at the Emergency Department in the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.

The nurses are taking the action over what they describe as "gross overcrowding" at the hospital's Emergency Department and the effect it is having on patient safety.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was concerned about the industrial action.

He said the latest figures for that hospital showed there were only six people on trolleys this morning, with another 41 in an overflow ward, awaiting assessment and admission.

He said hospital management had put proposals to the unions last night at the LRC, but they had not been accepted. Those talks were due to continue, he said.

Talks at the Labour Relations Commission which went on for five hours last night, failed to find a solution which may have halted the work stoppage.

While HSE management accepted the sincerity of the issues of patient safety raised by nurses, the moratorium on recruitment and the huge financial deficit in which the hospital finds itself, prevents them from addressing the issues in the immediate or medium term.

Mary Fogarty INMO Industrial Relations Officer said the reconfiguration process, which saw the consolidation of all emergency services in Limerick from Nenagh and Ennis, had failed as the additional 135 beds promised under that process had not materialised.

In addition, 100 acute beds in the hospital, and 174 elderly day care bed in other hospitals in the region, had closed.

She said it also emerged during last nights talks that €8m in funding for 13 additional consultants under a plan known as '100 plus', initiated by former Minister for Health Mary Harney, had never materialised for Limerick.

Nurses were joined on the picket line by colleagues from Galway University Hospital, who are also facing severe overcrowding in their emergency department as a result of taking in extra patients from Roscommon after its emergency department was closed.

Paul Bell Divisional Head of SIPTU said nurses in emergency departments across the country are under severe pressure and he could not rule out further industrial action this winter, as emergency departments face into their busiest period of the year.

Their action is the second four-hour stoppage at the hospital in eight days.

Nurses say both Minister for Health Dr James Reilly and the Heath Service Executive have failed to address their concerns.

Fianna Fáil's Health Spokesperson Billy Kelleher said Mr Reilly had failed to act to eliminate the chronic overcrowding despite his election promises and that Galway University Hospital, as well as Limerick, was also under severe pressure because of the closure of the Emergency Department at Roscommon County Hospital.

No plans to downgrade Portlaoise - Kenny

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has confirmed that there are no plans to downgrade Portlaoise Hospital despite rumours of a HSE plan to do so.

He was replying to the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, who said he had a HSE document that detailed plans that were the very opposite to Government promises about that hospital.

Mr Kenny said it was an important, busy hospital in the midlands and there were no plans to downgrade it.