Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the questions. In terms of senior decision-makers on site, it was my experience when I started visiting UHL that there were not senior decision-makers rostered on site out of hours and at the weekends. When I spoke to the nurses in the emergency department and the non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, they said their single biggest concern was being left from Friday evening to Monday morning without consultants rostered on site. Yes, there might have been a consultant rostered on call, but as we saw from the Aoife Johnston inquiry, for example, when that consultant was phoned, he did not come in. It was one of the issues I raised directly with the hospital clinical and administrative management. It is something we hard-wired into the new consultant contract. I am happy to say there is now rostering of consultants in the evenings and at the weekends. I want to acknowledge that.

We have increased the number of emergency department consultants from ten to 15. That helps as well. Any of those new consultants are on the new public-only contract. Unfortunately, UHL has the lowest uptake of the model four hospitals, or the big hospitals, for the new consultant contract. There is a private hospital being built in Limerick. I think that will probably help. It will mean consultants can do their public work in UHL and then they would be able to go off site to a private hospital. I think that will help, but I would very much like to see a higher uptake in UHL of the consultant contract. I think that would be in the interest of patients.

In relation to the Nenagh MAU, I will get the Deputy a note as to when that goes 24-7. I will take a look at the day cases in Nenagh as well and will revert to the Deputy. We will get a detailed note, speciality by speciality, on that.

Finally, with regard to St. Conlon's, the decision was made, and I am not going to just pass the buck here to the HSE. I was consulted on that decision and I am part of making that decision. That decision was made because we have elderly patients, frail patients and deteriorating patients on trolleys in UHL. In the rest of the country, the number of patients on trolleys is going down. In UHL, it has gone up 40% this year. It is a very serious situation and we need to do whatever we can to alleviate the pressure on those patients and on those healthcare workers.

As a short-term measure, we are using two community nursing units. We are using a 20-bed unit in Clare and we are a using the 50-bed unit in St. Conlon's. It is currently empty, and as the community are aware there were 23 residents due to move into the new facility. I know they are looking forward to it and that this is frustrating for them and for their families. I know they were involved, for example, in some of the new design in the new CNU and they are very disappointed. However, we have to do the right thing where patient safety risk is the highest.

For the people of Tipperary and Nenagh who end up in the emergency department at UHL, we want to make sure we have done everything we can to minimise the number of patients on trolleys and to reduce the amount of time people spend on trolleys.