Urgent care centres and drunk tanks at centre of A&E crisis plan

FINE GAEL’s health reform policies will focus on urgent care centres throughout the country and ‘drunk tanks’ to be placed in A&Es.

In his keynote speech at the Árd Fheis, party health spokesman Liam Twomey said the new care centres would fill the gap for places with no A&E facilities.

Three of the centres would be in Dublin with the other 12 in large towns which don’t have hospitals offering emergency facilities. They would operate on a 24-hour basis, be staffed by GPs and nurses and have diagnostic capabilities such as blood tests, x-rays and some observation beds.