Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to join with others in congratulating our colleague, Senator Ruane, on her well-deserved award for her excellent book yesterday. It is a significant achievement and it is absolutely right that it should be recognised in the Chamber today.

I rise once again, more out of despair at this stage, to raise the issue of University Hospital Limerick. I have raised the appalling industrial relations situation at the hospital on several occasions over the past several months. As a result, I get more and more correspondence from hospital staff who are in despair. Yesterday, one nurse told me in a letter which touched me that nurses are running out of the hospital. We all know how hard it is to hire nurses. However, nurses at this hospital are actively seeking employment elsewhere and are leaving in droves. The reason is the complete lack of people management from the human resources department in the hospital.

The nurse told me in her letter that she rang six different people in human resources but none of them would help her as they said it was not their area. She tried to raise a grievance regarding other issues with her line manager but she would not acknowledge them.

The week before last the hospital also recorded the 10,000th person on a hospital trolley. It has the worst hospital trolley crisis anywhere in the country. We have a hospital management which does not function or is not fit for purpose. It consistently fails to address bullying, turning a blind eye to it and, as a result, the hospital is losing skilled nurses. Three colleagues of the nurse who wrote to me have already left over the past few months.

I am calling for a specific debate on University Hospital Limerick. Surely we should all be able to agree that this situation cannot continue. It goes beyond funding and is due to a complete incompetence at management level. It needs to be addressed. We cannot keep waiting for something to fix itself. It will not. Matters continue to get worse by the day. We urgently need action on this issue.