Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I agree that the response shows a shocking ignorance of the situation in Tipperary, north and south. Patients from south Tipperary have to travel to Kilkenny for inpatient care. North Tipperary patients have to go to Ennis. Neither unit is fit for purpose. The Kilkenny unit is continually overcrowded, there are delayed admissions as a result, there are inappropriate early discharges and there are huge problems with travel for family members to support the patients there. There are huge industrial relations problems with staff; there have already been protests there. Patients are being admitted to the unit in Kilkenny to chairs and couches and some of them sleep on mattresses on the floor. It is simply not good enough. We need beds in Tipperary and we will insist that we get them.

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