Local hospital campaigners meet with health spokespersons

The Mid-West Hospital Campaign met with health spokespersons David Cullinane, Sinn Féin; Duncan Smith, Labour; Róisín Shortall, Social Democrats and Senator Colm Burke, Fine Gael on Thursday at Lenister House.

We have commitments from other party spokespersons to follow up in the coming weeks.

The purpose of the visit was to highlight our petition calling for the necessary upgrading of our public hospitals and the reopening of the Emergency Departments at Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s, and also to call for greater support measures to improve the health situation in the Mid-West in the short term.

We used the visit to make clear, that despite expert intervention, unacceptable levels of overcrowding persist at UHL. Trolley figures are back up to the 80s in the past few days.

We emphasised that we have both an emergency care problem and an elective care problem in the

Mid-West, two separate issues that can only be resolved with the addition of more Model 3 hospitals in the region. An elective hospital alone will not be enough.

We also asked them to cost upgrading Ennis and Nenagh to Model 2s as an alternative to a private elective hospital and as a stepping stone towards the achievement of a full public Model 3 hospital catering for the elective and emergency care needs of all the people living in the Mid-West. We also asked them in the interim to look at the pilot project running at Mallow hospital to alleviate overcrowding at CUH, and to ascertain if this could be extended to Ennis and Nenagh to at least keep ambulances in the county where they can reach people in a timely manner. We also raised the out of hours GP services and the lack of alternatives for those who find themselves sick out of hours, and highlighted the need for greater supports to strengthen these alternatives to help reduce presentations at the emergency department.

The meetings were generally positive and we await follow-up in the coming weeks.