Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the management of UHL to the committee.

I would love to see UHL being the top hospital in the country. I have had family who trained in the hospital in earlier years and are near retirement age now. It was - and I emphasise "was" - the best training hospital in the country at that time. Student nurses wanted to go there to be trained because of what it meant to be trained in UHL. My biggest concerns with the hospital are, one, the HIQA inspection and, two, my concern since I have been a Teachta Dála and before about morale of the staff.

I spent time in the hospital in February when I overturned my car. I hate saying this but UHL was not my first choice. I went to St. John's Hospital first and was sent back to UHL. I asked if they could send me somewhere else and they said no. For me to say that, who wants UHL to be the top hospital in the country, is not only a concern for me but should be a massive concern for the witnesses.

The biggest issue I saw in UHL was the lack of reporting of minor and major incidents. I spoke to a lot of staff in the hospital, ranging from porters right up to the top. I am not taking a picture from one sector only. They felt it was like being bullied in the hospital if they reported something. That is not right. Huge money has been spent in UHL on legal fees in challenges to different things that have happened in the hospital. If that funding was put towards extra resources, training and induction, it would help our hospital.

Morale within the hospital has to be right for people to get back in there. The structure within the hospital has to be right for people to get back in there and want to nurse there. Consider the amount of nursing staff who have left the hospital. I talked to people as I went from every part of the hospital to where I had to go to. They said the biggest problem was emergency services. When they got to other sections of the hospital, they could become nurses again, but they felt it was like wartime every time they went to work in the emergency services. They went in to do their job and do their best and left stressed, saying they could not help somebody because of the overcrowding in the hospital. I was on a trolley when I was there and was moved from one section to another. In one section, there was a machine alongside me. They had to move three trolleys to get that machine out and get it to somebody who needed it. There was a line of people along the corridors. There were papers put on doors to block me seeing trolleys lined out on other corridors, in a hospital I want to see being the best in the country.

There have been fatalities in that hospital because of non-reporting of minor and major incidents. I will not mention the case because the Chair outlined the situation. A case has been going on for three years where a young girl died in that hospital and, if the major incident had been reported, that person would not have been allowed to do that surgery. The case has been held up and stonewalled for three years. It is a legal thing that is being covered up because it will show up the hospital for its inadequate-----