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

The issue across the entire hospital group is capacity more than anything else. We hit it all the time and the number of people on trolleys and on waiting lists comes up in the Chamber regularly. The staffing issues in Sligo University Hospital, particularly in the emergency department, have been at crisis point for the past number of months. We met the management of the hospital who told us that new nurses were being recruited and that 14 were to be in place before the end of November. The hospital has got some of them, but not all of them. The staff had organised a lunchtime protest today because of the staffing levels in Sligo University Hospital. They postponed it because negotiations are taking place to try to do something about it. However, it is a crisis situation. There are issues with bed capacity, diagnostic capacity and theatre space. There is a range of problems, and not just in Sligo. It is in Letterkenny and in all the hospitals in the region. It is a very poor reflection of how the west is being looked after when one considers that the Saolta hospital group is in such a crisis.

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