Winter Plan for Sligo University Hospital way too late - Harkin

“It will be spring by the time the winter plan for Sligo University Hospital is implemented,” Sligo Leitrim TD, Marian Harkin has said.

“The winter plan announced for Sligo University Hospital (SUH) contains ten actions, seven of which relate directly to the recruitment of staff. Yet, when I submitted a question to the Minister for Health asking how many of these staff had already been recruited for both Sligo and Letterkenny University Hospitals the response from the HSE told me, ‘a recruitment process is due to get underway to commence filling all of the approved posts.’

Deputy Marian Harkin.

“This means that winter will be well and truly on the way before any appointments are made and very likely it will be over before all staff are recruited, that's looking at the best possible scenario,” Ms Harkin said, following her intervention in in the Dáil calling on Minister Donnelly to act in regard to numbers waiting on beds at SUH.

She also called on Minister Donnelly to use private hospital capacity to ease the crisis for those waiting on beds at both Sligo and Letterkenny hospitals.

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“The surge in numbers attending SUH is not a surprise because we knew what to expect; that a serious flu season was likely and COVID numbers are still impacting negatively on hospital capacity. As well as that, SUH is in the top three of the hospitals worst affected by trolley numbers and figures from the INMO show this to be the case since January 2022,” Deputy Harkin said.

“The response I received from the HSE, where they spoke of ‘a recruitment process due to get underway’, is meaningless in the context of any winter plan for 2022-2023. It is too late, it is far too late, all those staff should already be in place because winter has already started.

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“It is unreasonable and unsafe to ask staff to continue working and provide both emergency and elective care in the current situation and it is unsafe and undignified for patients to endure such long waiting times.

“While the Minister has said he will and is using private hospitals, he must move immediately to ensure that private hospitals are used for all non-urgent elective work. Anything less will mean that the unrelenting pressure on patients and staff at SUH will continue, and that is simply unacceptable,” Deputy Harkin concluded.