Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

Until 13 September, there were 956 cases of C. difficile notified. As there was no notification before, we have nothing with which to compare these statistics. I do not think there is always a correlation between the money provided and the cleanliness of a hospital. Some of the hospitals that scored highest on the hygiene are those that have no microbiologist, such as Mallow hospital. Some of the older hospitals did well, as did some of the newer hospitals so there was no correlation between new buildings and old buildings, between hospitals with microbiologists and those with no microbiologists, or between in-house cleaning and outsourced cleaning. This must be a priority for the management of hospitals rather than microbiologists. We are entitled to expect at the least that our hospitals are the cleanest places in the country. When nuns were in charge of hospitals, my memory was of how clean they seemed to be. Therefore, I think this is a question of management rather than resources. When a hospital gets its budget, I expect its management to prioritise cleaning and hand washing.

I recently went to see a patient in St. Vincent's hospital and I was very impressed with the audio-reminder that reminded people to wash their hands. It was taken seriously by all the visitors to the hospital. I would love to see that approach in all the hospitals around the country, not just among visitors but also among the staff who work in those hospitals.

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