Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has asked some new questions that are pertinent to patient safety in UHL. We might ask the Chair for a little indulgence in terms of the clock.

The claims being made about staff vacancies and patient safety are disputed by me, the Department, the chief nurse and the HSE. I have written to the unions and asked for a list of these 2,000 alleged vacant posts. We have not got it yet. If we get it, we will do a full audit of that. We take any such situation very seriously. The claim made of 240 vacant nursing posts in UHL is simply not true or correct. I will ask Ms Kenna to come in on this. There were claims made last year that there were several hundred vacant nursing posts in UHL and that they were not at safe staffing levels. Ms Kenna is the chief nurse, has led the deployment of safe staffing and is the head of patient safety. I asked her and the team to go immediately to UHL to check because we takes these claims seriously. I ask her to convey what she found.