Clare Independent TD Violet-Ann Wynne has called on the Minister for Health to ‘show leadership’ in the decade-long Mid-West hospital crisis and not let the region ‘dwindle and die.’
Deputy Wynne has written to Minister Stephen Donnelly requesting an urgent meeting on the evolving situation at UHL and once more putting on the record my resounding support for the reopening of the A&E at Ennis HospitalI look forward to hearing from you very soon.
Over the weekend and up to today, my office has been inundated with correspondence from constituents regarding the situation of deep concern owing to the major internal incident at University Hospital Limerick, the Region’s only Model 4 Hospital.
The stories that have been recounted to me over the past few days are nothing short of harrowing and are a scathing indictment of the management of this Hospital, and the HSE’s Winter Plan. I am sure that all of my colleagues in the Mid-West are receiving a high level of correspondence on this issue as well, and I’m sure that some of them have been in touch separately.
I think that for the sake of transparency what is needed now is an emergency meeting between your Department and our Oireachtas representatives from the constituencies in the Mid-West Region. My constituents are scared to attend UHL for fear of being abandoned on a trolley for three days. They have serious questions, and those questions require serious answers. I am requesting this meeting and a reply to this letter as a matter of priority given the extremely time-sensitive nature of these concerns.
As a result of the significant lack of capacity, my constituents in Clare are going without both unscheduled and scheduled medical care. On the point of scheduled care, you will be aware that I raised the issue of outpatient waiting lists with the Taoiseach, then Tánaiste Varadkar in November. As on the end of November 2022, there were 13,049 adults and 1,404 children on UHL outpatient waiting lists for more than one year. The cancellation of outpatient procedures over these past days have further exacerbated these lists and I am confident that this will be reflected in the January 2023 figures when they are published.
On a separate but related point, Last month, the Chief Clinical Director of UHL, Prof. Brian Lenehan said that there was no case for the upgrade of services at Ennis Hospital to Model 3 status and yesterday he confirmed that UHL at Dooradoyle simply does not have enough bed capacity to deal with the volume of patients presenting. This is a problem that has plagued the Region for more than a decade, with a very simple solution. It is time for your Government to accept that the decision to close the A&E at Ennis Hospital was the wrong one and set out to put money aside and a plan in place to see the A&E reopened as a matter of priority.
It is simply a disgrace that UHL is the only Model 4 Hospital in the country allowed to operate without a complimentary Model 3 Hospital. The advice has been given time and again to reopen Ennis and it has been ignored by Government. Minister, your Government can no longer afford to ignore this advice. I accept that Government did not foresee an influx of Covid, RSV and flu cases even though a similar occurrence of high presentations happens around this time every single year – but now it is time for leadership and action. If you do not take what has happened over these past few days as a lesson and set about to reopen the A&E at Ennis as a matter of priority then this situation will be repeated again this time next year.
Minister, we know the problem – we have known the problem for over a decade, what we need now is a solution. What we need now is leadership. I beg you, please don’t let the Mid-West dwindle and die.