Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)

A woman contacted me today out of concern for her husband who is waiting for an operation for cancer. He is aged 32 and was first diagnosed in 2002. Unfortunately, the cancer returned last February. He waited until May for radiation treatment, but this did not shrink the tumours, and he has been waiting since then for surgery with no date given. That is outlandish and should not happen.

An incident concerning the out-of-hours radiography services in Kerry General Hospital came to my attention recently. Somebody who was seriously injured in a Gaelic game could not have an operation until the following Tuesday due to the lack of radiography cover.

At Kerry General Hospital at present, out-of-hours radiography services are available from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. from Monday to Friday and from 5 p.m. on Friday to 9 a.m. on Monday. During these periods, one radiographer is available for the provision of an out-of-hours plain film service and one for the CT scanner service. The person on general call is on duty for a 24-hour period and covers referrals from the accident and emergency department, inpatients, both mobile and ward-bound, direct referrals from the SouthDoc service and any emergency surgical procedures in the operating theatres that require radiographic input. Given current staffing levels, the hospital cannot provide a radiographic service that will permit prolonged use of X-rays in the operating theatre out of hours. At present, it is not possible to permit surgical procedures such as intramedullary nailing of long bone fractures or stabilisation of hip fractures out of office hours.

Despite numerous requests to provide additional cover, particularly for the radiography service in Tralee, the hospital has been unable to provide this due to a lack of resources. The number of radiographers employed at present is 14.5 whole-time equivalents, which has remained unchanged since 1996. Were a second on-call rota to be provided with current staffing levels, the resultant time off would cause an unacceptable reduction in the resources available during normal hours.

The hospital will not be in a position to start a second on-call service until the radiography staffing levels have increased to a level similar to those found in similarly-sized hospitals nationwide, that is, with 20 to 22 whole-time equivalents. It is in the best interests of all to provide a second on-call service as the radiographer is placed in an invidious position whenever theatre cases and orthopaedic cases in particular arise. Invariably, such cases take a relatively long time to complete, which leaves the rest of the hospital without cover and results in the on-call radiographer being completely overstretched and harassed.

This problem is not caused by a lack of willingness on the part of the hospital's serving radiologists but by a simple lack of resources that prevents them from providing the necessary back-up service to cover emergency operative treatment of patients with long bone fractures at Kerry General Hospital at present.

I reiterate that weekends in Kerry are busy times for activities such as field sports and obviously injuries will happen. Such people should not be obliged to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to have operations performed that could be carried out immediately over the weekend. The presence of radiography cover could save a person's entire sports career.

See this speech in context