Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As part of the recent reconfiguration of Dublin hospitals, the emergency department at St. Columcille's Hospital, Loughlinstown was downgraded to a minor injuries unit and 24-hour care was stopped. I, and many others, supported these changes because the clinicians leading the reconfiguration unanimously believed that it would save lives. The HSE gave us repeated assurances that St. Vincent's University Hospital would be given sufficient resources to absorb the extra workload from Loughlinstown hospital. Despite these assurances, the following letter appeared in The Irish Times from a registrar in St. Vincent's:

The real scandal at St Vincent’s University Hospital is the overwhelming increase in acutely unwell patient volume since the effective closure of St. Columcille’s Loughlinstown to out-of-hours admissions. [This] has led to a doubling of medical and surgical admissions to an already stretched but otherwise efficient and well-run public hospital. Clinicians of all grades and disciplines are working flat out to cope with the increased demand.

I followed up with clinicians in St. Vincent's and they said ambulance arrivals and GP referrals to the emergency department there are up approximately 50%. Overall admissions are up approximately 50% and have doubled in out-of-hours. They say that in spite of this the emergency department has received no additional nurses and only a token complement of doctors. Just last week staff that were promised from Loughlinstown to St. Vincent's have been pulled, so the emergency department in St. Vincent's is dealing with a 50% increase in volume with only a handful of extra medics, contrary to the assurances we were all given.

That is not the only problem. St. Vincent's has not been given the additional ward beds to deal with the additional volume either. Patients at Loughlinstown who become very sick are referred directly to the intensive care unit in St. Vincent's, which is also bringing that to over-capacity, according to the medical staff there. Not only is the emergency department working flat out, there is nowhere in the hospital for them to send the patients once they have stabilised them. The letter ends:" The end result is an unsustainable, overcrowded and unsafe mess with significant compromise in delivery of care." Patients are suffering and some will die.

This is outrageous. It is unacceptable to me and I have no doubt that it is unacceptable to the Tánaiste that this has happened. Why have the additional resources, which we were promised would be put in place, not been put in place? Why has a situation been allowed to develop in St. Vincent's hospital which clinicians are now telling us will lead to patients in the Tánaiste's constituency, my constituency and many other places dying?

See this speech in context