Thousands march in protest
Government party candidates contesting the imminent local elections in the Nenagh Electoral Area have been dealt a major blow to their prospects of success following a huge show of opposition to the highly controversial stance by the Coalition on care services for the elderly in the local community.
Thousands who marched through the streets of Nenagh on Saturday last in protest over the decision by the HSE and Department of Health to repurpose the town’s new €24 million community nursing home for the elderly to a temporary privately-run stepdown facility for patients from the overcrowded University Hospital Limerick were urged to make their objections to the move known to the Government on voting day Friday, June 7.
Addressing protesters after the march outside the locked entrance gates to the new currently vacant €24 million Community Nursing Unit beside the town’s hospital in Tyone, Nenagh, Independent councillor Seamie Morris urged people to make the local elections a referendum on the Government’s move to repurpose the new unit.
The huge crowds turned out despite the fact that hundreds had already got out of bed before dawn to take part in the Darkness Into Light walk.
Cllr Morris said Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and candidates contesting the elections in the group formed by sitting Independent TD Michael Lowry now had “a battle on their hands” due to the Government’s hotly contentious policy on elderly care in Nenagh.
ACCESS DENIED
Mr Lowry, who supports the Coalition in the Dáil, was first to issue a public statement several weeks ago revealing news that the HSE had taken a decision to deny access to elderly people seeking care in the new unit by repurposing it on a temporary basis as a privately-run stepdown facility for patients from UHL.
The Fianna Fáil TD in the constituency, Jackie Cahill, admitted that he actually asked the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to temporarily repurpose the new 50-bed unit to provide 50 sub-acute beds for UHL, pending the opening of a new 96-bed unit at the Limerick hospital site next year.
Deputy Cahill said the only other existing publicly funded community nursing home in Nenagh, Saint Conlon’s Home at Church Road - condemned as unfit for purpose by the Health Information and Quality Authority - should continue operating until construction on the new 96-bed block was completed at UHL.
Saturday’s protest march against such a move was the largest seen in Nenagh for years.
The march, led by a group of bikers and wheelchair bound elderly residents of Saint Conlon’s Home, started at the grounds of Saint Mary of the Rosary Church at 2.30pm.
Large numbers joined the march as it made its way through the centre of the town for speeches outside the locked entrance gates of the new state-of-the-art new unit beside the local hospital in Tyone.
By the time the march reached Kenyon Street, the entire two traffic lanes of the street were filled with protesters, stretching from the railway station back to the Market Cross.
It was the largest public show of opposition in the town in 15 years.
Back then people turned out to vociferously object to the closure of the accident and emergency department in the town’s hospital.
A decade and a half on, the impact of that highly controversial closure move in 2009 persist.
The downgrading in Nenagh, combined with the closure of emergency departments at two other small hospitals in the Mid-West, led to the massive overcrowding that has lasted to this day at UHL - the only hospital providing acute services in the entire region.