Officials and unions to meet on funding row
More than 70 staff were due to start work in one unit in Castlebar on July 1 but were told last week their job offers were being withdrawn as the fully equipped 33-bed unit would not now be opened. Many of them have started legal proceedings against the Western Health Board.
In the meantime a new 40-bed orthopaedic unit for trauma patients is also lying idle in the University College Hospital in Galway while surgeons struggle in what they say is a hopelessly outdated and overcrowded unit in Merlin Park Hospital.
