Ms Marie McMahon:

We cannot have a situation such as we had last Christmas and into the new year, where staff in both the emergency department and Shannondoc were left to cope. There was no way of contacting any management. People were coming to us, texting us, ringing us, contacting us by email, asking where they could go to get a doctor. We could not get a doctor for about four or five days and we could not contact anybody. There was no system whereby any manager seemed to be contactable. The staff were left to deal with that, and that is totally unacceptable.