Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This morning I raise the 88 patients on trolleys in University Hospital Limerick today and the harrowing letter by 72 non-consultant hospital doctors based there. Think about that figure: there are 72 doctors highlighting the fact that patients are being lost in the acute unit and that sometimes patients wait for days before they are seen by a doctor. They apologise to patients. They say that when they issued warnings in the past, those warnings were ignored by hospital management. It gets even worse than that. They said that following the last letter by medical registrars in the hospital last year, management conducted an internal witch hunt to find out who was responsible. Think about that: rather than being concerned about the great issues in the hospital being highlighted by their own doctors, the response of management was to conduct an internal witch hunt to find out who wrote the letter.

I, among others, have been saying for a considerable time that there is a fundamental problem with University Hospital Limerick at management level. Yes, there are key funding resource issues. We have been consistent in highlighting that. We are still 200 beds short in the mid-west. However, beyond that there is a management culture there that is compounding the situation, day in, day out; week in, week out. When 72 of your own doctors stand up to say "we have a major problem, we are being ignored" and a witch hunt is conducted against anyone who highlights the problem then surely to God it is time for the Minister and the Government to act.