Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to bring to the attention of the House very real concerns in regard to what is happening in University Hospital Limerick. I am not just talking about the ongoing scandal of the emergency department and the ever-worsening trolley crisis, which is desperate, but there is something altogether more sinister apparently happening within the hospital. I can tell the House that the industrial relations climate within the hospital is at an all-time low. In fact, I understand the Workplace Relations Commission has been called in, originally by SIPTU but now by all of the unions, because they have lost faith entirely with hospital management. There is an absolute scandal about the senior shop steward, a man I know personally, who is not being allowed to return to work. He did not do anything wrong and he has not been accused of anything by the hospital. In fact, he was threatened with assault while in work and became ill, and he is now fit to return to work. He is a senior spokesperson who stands up for people in the hospital but, without any explanation, the hospital management refused to let him back in. There are ongoing reports of bullying and intimidation of staff. There are credible reports of people being appointed to positions without any interview process, people who just happen to be direct relations of senior management in the hospital - there have been a number of instances in this regard.

There is the ongoing scandal of privatisation of services, on which I will cite just two examples. In radiology, there is a highly active private department within the hospital which has access to all the public facilities but only to treat patients with private care. Private patients are treated in less than two weeks while public patients languish for months, years in some cases, without access to the service. Similarly, in MRI there is a staff agreement that allows the MRI to operate seven days a week but management has decided to curtail it to 4.30 p.m. and instead outsource it to private companies from 4.30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The impact of all of this is that staff are at their wit's end. There is something rotten at the heart of management in University Hospital Limerick. I have written to the Minister and he has promised an investigation. I ask the Leader, as a matter of urgency, to bring the Minister to the House. All of us in Limerick are suffering at the moment in terms of what is not working right in the hospital but the staff are suffering most of all. Someone in authority in the Department of Health or the HSE needs to hold the management of the hospital to account and it needs to happen now.