Nurses hit out over health funding
As a fresh row broke out over hospital waiting lists, Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) president Ann Martin said that 100 beds remained closed in the greater Dublin area and in new units around the country due to a lack of funding.
The INO's conference starts today in Killarney and is set to focus on the effect that the shortage of nurses and midwives is having.
"The strategies and reform programmes require significant additional financial investment and the absence of progress continues to result in overcrowded hospitals, inadequate community care services and a lack of investment in care of the elderly and mental health services," she said.
Health Minister Micheál Martin yesterday defended the Government's record on health provision and said there had been a significant fall in hospital waiting lists.
New figures show that eight out of 10 patients are waiting less than a year for surgical treatment and four out of 10 are waiting between six and 12 months. But Mr Martin also said he had no regrets that the figures were still short of his National Health Strategy target that no patient would be waiting longer than three months by the year's end.
But the Government's general election promise to abolish hospital waiting lists within two years was attacked by the opposition.
Fine Gael's Olivia Mitchell said that Fianna Fáil took the voters for a ride because two years after the election, hospital waiting lists had actually increased by 2,000.
Labour spokesperson Liz McManus added that the figures showed an increase at the end of last year.
The minister argued that the key issue was waiting times, not numbers, and said targets were set so that progress could be made.
"I am happy to say that we are making progress on waiting times and by setting ourselves a target we put ourselves under pressure to deliver," he said.
Mr Martin added that the national waiting list figure, as reported by health agencies, was 27,318 at the end of December 2003.
However, the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which will fund the treatment of 12,000 patients this year, identified 19,591 people waiting more than three months.
