Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Minister of State is here this evening to take this question regarding Sligo University Hospital and the overcrowding in the emergency department there. We share the same constituents so I am sure he is as aware of these issues as I am. Over the summer I have had various contacts from both patients and staff who have expressed their concerns in regard to the overcrowding situation, which they see as dangerous. I have an email here that I received on 28 July:

I am a nurse in the Emergency Department in Sligo University Hospital ... I don’t think you or your colleagues will ever begin to understand the fear and stress [that working in an ED] has caused me. I continued to work there as wave after wave of COVID hit. I worked in there when my colleagues were hit with COVID and I luckily never succumbed to it. We were so short staffed on days and nights that we were lucky if we got a 30 minute break in our 13 hour shift and yet we kept giving.

We are now in dire straits we start days at 8am and some mornings the patients we left in the waiting room the previous night are still sitting waiting to be seen! Admitted Patients are spending more than 48 hours on trolleys! The lowest point I saw was when admitted patients were taken off trolleys and put sitting on hard chairs down an X-ray corridor for the day waiting for a bed on the ward to become available and given back a trolley for the night if they remained in ED.

I know the Minister of State is aware of this situation, as many people in Sligo are. It has gotten some publicity in the media over the summer because this is an absolutely ridiculous situation with so many people in the emergency department and it is so overcrowded. Last Thursday my own young fella broke his finger playing hurling and I spent four hours there with him. He was seen and looked after very well by the staff there and there was no issue with that. However, I saw first-hand the stress of people waiting there, who were worried about loved ones who had been admitted, wondering where they were and what was happening with them. One man said he was waiting 27 hours sitting on a chair to find out what was going on. The stress that this puts on people is unacceptable in this day and age. Much of this comes back to the central point that the staffing is not in place.

I also spoke to a nurse about this issue this morning. She sent me an email yesterday and I rang her and talked to her about it. She told me that today at 3.30 p.m., 71 people had been through the emergency department in Sligo and in that time, from 8 o'clock this morning, there were five staff nurses and three care assistants. That is all there was for the huge volume of patients they were trying to deal with. There is clearly a huge problem with staffing in this hospital.

The level of staffing that is required and meant to be in place is between 12 and 14 staff nurses, in addition to care assistants and other backup staff. That is not in place nor has it been. Management told unions on various occasions that it is recruiting more staff to be put in place. Quite frankly, they are now in a situation where they do not believe that it will happen having been let down so many times by promises of this nature. It is not appropriate in this day and age that this kind of situation should continue.

This is not just an issue in the emergency department. It is an issue for the entire hospital. In most wards, there are beds along corridors and additional spaces are used to cater for people in an attempt to take the pressure off the emergency department. There are clear problems relating to space - there is a new wing being built at present - and the staffing, which is the primary issue and needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Many people have told me that when nurses qualify, they apply for positions in hospitals and they are actually not being recruited. That is a matter that needs to be addressed in some way. Staff are being taken on by the hospital in other ways besides being directly recruited by the HSE and that needs to end. We need to get as many staff in place as quickly as possible to resolve this issue. I look forward to the Minister of State's reply.

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