Nurses: Consultant's pay cut offer shows staffing crisis

A hospital consultant’s offer to give up about €36,000 of his annual pay to employ a midwife in one of the country’s busiest maternity units demonstrated the desperate state of hospital staffing, it was claimed tonight.

The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) said the offer by Dr David Vaughan, Chairman of the medical board of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, is a result of the failures by health chiefs to address inadequate staffing levels at the facility.