Patients ‘don’t have political clout of road lobby’

THE Government’s ability to spend billions of euro on improving the country’s road network contrasts sharply with its inability to provide 3,000 additional acute hospital beds, the head of the Irish Nurses Organisation declared yesterday.

INO general secretary, Liam Doran, said the Government lacked the political will to ensure it provided all of the additional beds by 2008.

"It's the Government's agreed figure of what is required but we have to keep on fighting the same battle because the political will just isn't there," he said.