Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)

I wish to share time with Deputy Moynihan-Cronin.

Yesterday I attended a protest meeting outside Kerry General Hospital at which 40 GPs took the serious step of picketing the hospital in support of the staff of the hospital as well as to show their frustration at the lack of proper services available and the lack of funding to deliver those services.

Kerry General Hospital has the same number of medical staff as 20 years ago, despite the fact it is catering for a far bigger catchment area. The hospital caters for all of County Kerry, parts of west Limerick and parts of west Cork.

Last week I saw at first hand the situation in the accident and emergency department and the strain under which the staff work. I have never seen the nurses, doctors and domestic staff with such low morale as a result of the pressure under which they work and the lack of concern at Government level to provide funding for services.

I will cite a number of recent problems at the hospital: the transfer of the medical manager; the resignation of the financial controller; the non-replacement of the third in charge in the maternity unit; the second in charge is out sick; accident and emergency consultant, Mr. Seán O'Rourke, has threatened to resign; and accident and emergency porters have not received training in the application of plaster of Paris because of lack of funds to pay for the course. Such training would alleviate pressure on the nurses in the accident and emergency department.

The hospital was criticised in the recent hygiene report. What the report failed to recognise was that the cleaning of the wards is carried out for five and a half hours per day, six days a week with a skeleton crew working on Sundays. When that cleaning is completed, there is no follow-up service and two or three hours later, the whole hospital may often need to be recleaned.

There is a proposal for contract cleaning tenders and a further cutting of the cleaning hours and an increase in the work involved. No funding has been provided for Kerry General Hospital despite criticism in the hygiene report and a lack of adequate services for the catchment area.

I have asked the Minister on numerous occasions to go to the hospital to see for herself. I ask her again to make herself available to see the situation on the ground. What is more frustrating for those of us who are elected representatives from County Kerry is that the hospital services, the entire constituency and County Kerry has a Minister at the Cabinet table yet we do not have the funding for services forthcoming from Cabinet.

I ask the Minister of State to take on board all the points I have made. This issue is raised time and again by the elected representatives but nothing seems to be happening. I hope the Minister of State will address it in his reply.

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