Plans for lunchtime protests outside A&Es by nurses may be reinstated

AS the number of patients on trolleys reached 335 yesterday, the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) said plans to hold lunchtime protests outside A&Es are likely to be reinstated.

The action, due to commence on February 22, was deferred after Health Minister Mary Harney persuaded the INO to give her €70m 10-point plan a chance to resolve the A&E crisis.

However, last night, INO general secretary Liam Doran said the protests were likely to be reinstated at the INO’s executive council meeting on March 22. “There is a huge gap between the plan and the ability to deliver on it and in the middle are nurses and patients,” he said.

He said an INO meeting with health services managers last week showed an “alarming complacency” and that statements issued by the Health Service Executive saying progress was being made in resolving the crisis were “codology”.

“This crisis has all the hallmarks of people in offices not having a clue of what’s happening,” he said.

A statement from the HSE said it was working to ensure that the e70m A&E plan “produces sustainable solutions”.

INO spokesperson for Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, Edward Mathews, said the HSE authorised 30 home care packages in early February but only allowed the initiation of seven of these out of 29 applications. Meanwhile, patients in Beaumont were receiving IV fluids and blood transfusions on chairs in the A&E department, he said.

In Tipperary, nurses have withdrawn from discussions on all issues relating to the amalgamation of services between Our Lady’s Hospital Cashel and St Joseph’s Hospital Clonmel. INO spokesman Tony Fitzpatrick said the withdrawal was due to the failure of the HSE and the department to ensure alternative services would be developed at Cashel if the nurses agreed to the concentration of acute services in Clonmel. Ten years after it was agreed to develop both hospitals in tandem, little had happened.