Theatres closed due to lack of sterilisation staff

TWO theatres at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) cannot be used because there are no staff available to sterilise the instruments, the Joint committee on Health and Children heard yesterday.

The theatres are used to treat gynaecological problems, such as stress incontinence. Labour’s Kathleen Lynch said she had been told by a consultant that he could clear both his private and public waiting lists within the year if the theatres could be used.

Chief executive of the Health Service Executive, Prof Brendan Drumm, said Cork University Hospital had a staff of around 3,500 people and he found it hard to believe that a sterilisation unit could not be operated in because there was no staff available.

Fine Gael’s Bernard Allen clashed with Prof Drumm when the HSE chief insisted that the Mercy University Hospital in Cork already had enough staff to operate a new €5m A&E unit that has been lying idle for 14 months.

“The Mercy University Hospital has 27 admissions a day. It has 120 doctors and 400 nurses. It should be able to open the A&E departments without the need for additional staff,” Prof Drumm said.

Mr Allen said he had also been reliably informed that 30 staff members at the hospital were being made redundant, a development that made a mockery of Prof Drumm’s claim that there was no job losses in the health services.

The Cork Fine Gael TD said it was not good enough for Prof Drumm to say the unit should be opened because the hospital had enough staff.

“Somebody has to take this matter by the scruff of the neck. There is enough senior management in the health service to make a decision,” he said. “The victims in all of this are vulnerable, sick people.”

A statement released later by Mercy University Hospital blamed budgetary constraints for their “reluctant decision” not to renew contracts for 35 temporary personnel across a number of departments.

Prof Drumm also told committee he was glad that a practice where money targeted by the Government for one area of the health service was sometimes re-diverted to another by the health authority had ended.

In future, the re-direction of Government targeted funding would require prior approval form the Department of Health and Department of Finance.