This article is from page 2 of the 2011-09-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
THE Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (IRMO) say that they stand ready to treat any emergency cases that present from Clare during their four-hour work stoppage which is due to take place at the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick tomorrow, September 21.
Speaking to The Clare People yesterday, the INMO’s Industrial Relations Officer, Mary Fogarty, said that the work stoppage was not aimed at the people of Clare but instead was taking place to highlight the underfunding of emergency health in the region.
Any emergency instances which require an ambulance, such as car accidents and heart attacks, will still be brought to the hospital where the INMO will have a skeleton staff in place to manage emergencies.
“There are still some talks taking place between the INMO and the HSE but at this point it is difficult to see a situation where the action planned for Wednesday will not take place,” said Ms Fogarty. “This will affect anyone from Clare who is brought to the hospital while the accident and emergency facilities in Ennis are closed during the night, and it will also affect any emergency situation in Clare, or anyone who needs to travel to the A&E in an ambulance.
“We will have a staff available to deal with emergency situations. This action is not targeted at the people of Clare, it is an effort to highlight for the people how these critical facilities have been under-funded.”
The planned four-hour work stoppage will take place at the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick this Wednesday, September 21, from 1pm to 5pm. The INMO also confirmed yesterday that this is the first of a series of industrial actions planned by the nurses but they have declined to confirm or deny whether these actions will spread to the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Ennis in the coming weeks.
The organisation have blamed the moratorium on the recruitment of registered nurses, the closure of 100 beds in the acute hospital services in the Clare and Limerick region, as well as the “failure of the reconfiguration process” to transfer all day surgery to Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s Hospitals.
“Nurses working at the hospital have repeatedly raised their concerns in respect of the clinical safety issues with both HIQA and Senior HSE Management,” said Mrs Fogarty.
“Unfortunately, due to the inability of both bodies to address the deplorable clinical environment now visible daily at the hospital, nurses are driven to publicly highlight the extremely serious situation through industrial action.”