Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for giving me the opportunity to raise the important issue of St. John's Hospital in Sligo. The hospital looks after young disabled people and the elderly. The hospital has 195 high-dependency beds. I raise the issue because of concerns expressed by hospital staff, especially nursing staff, whom I met last week. They outlined to me some of the difficulties being experienced in the hospital. They told me that currently seven full-time nurses have not been replaced and five nurses are on maternity leave, which is a deficit of 12 nurses. A total of 12 care assistants have been let go. Two senior nursing posts have been vacant since last November, while a further 20 nurses who have been working at the hospital, some of them for 20 years, are currently on one-month contracts. Staff are concerned that such staff will leave if they get an opportunity for a full-time nursing job and it is difficult to blame them in the circumstances.

It is my understanding that under the PCCC, primary community and continuing care, programme, those services were not to be affected by the moratorium on employment. Will the Minister of State please confirm whether that is the case? If it is, it is not being applied in the case of St. John's Hospital.

Unlike many services the hospital has been operating within budget. There was a proposal for a new extension to the rehabilitation part of the hospital under the national development plan. What is the up-to-date position in that regard? I raise these issues because they are extremely important in the context of the services provided at the hospital. Patients range in age from 25 to 104, the age of the oldest patient in the hospital last year. It is important, even in the context of cutbacks, that such facilities where care is given to the most vulnerable people in society are protected.

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