Calls for Nenagh Hospital ED to be fully re-opened

A strongly-backed campaign is continuing its calls to re-open the Emergency Department in Nenagh Hospital.
The Mid Western Hospital Campaign is a community group which was formed in 2019 by the people of Clare, Tipperary and Limerick. It recently submitted a motion to the Regional Health Forum West asking that “the consistent overcrowding in University Hospital Limerick be addressed by reversing the closure of Emergency Departments at Ennis, Nenagh and St John's Hospitals”.
“The motion is an important one,” said the spokesperson for the Campaign in Nenagh Damian O'Donoghue, “given the high levels of overcrowding that currently exist in Limerick hospital. In 2009 a decision was made by the Government to downgrade Ennis, Nenagh and St John's hospitals and to close the emergency departments in these hospitals.
“A new centre of excellence was promised at University Hospital Limerick but what we got instead was the country’s most consistently overcrowded Emergency Department, a hospital which is understaffed and where healthcare workers are under immense pressure from the beginning to the end of their working day, a hospital in which patients are not getting the care they deserve and, even more seriously, where their lives are being put at risk.
“It has come to the stage where people in need of care are avoiding the hospital. None of this is acceptable. Nenagh, Ennis and St John's Emergency Departments should never have been closed.”
Mr O Donoghue went on to say that “if you are unlucky enough to be injured or become unwell after 8pm then UHL is the only option if treatment is required. Many of the people living in North Tipperary are hours away from this treatment.”
Cllr Seamus Morris said the reconfiguration of the emergency services in the three hospitals was imposed on “an unwilling population” in 2009. He pointed out that the Health Minister Stephen Donnelly recently admitted that “the Hospital plan clearly has not worked.”
The councillor said the decision to remove a 24 Hour Emergency service from Nenagh Hospital was a terrible one. “The idea was that UHL could provide safe emergency services instead for the people of the Mid-West but this has not been the case.”
He criticised members of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for “towing the HSE line” regarding the notion of a Centre of Excellence at UHL.
“The reconfiguration was ill conceived and indeed reckless,” Cllr Morris added, “as the promised 'centre of excellence' was never actually delivered as the optimum number of beds was never achieved. In fact, incredibly, 13 years after reconfiguration, Hospital management have said that they only have 530 beds which is 70 beds short of what they need.”
Cllr Morris claimed that about 200 people have “died prematurely because of the lack of safe emergency services.”
He spoke of “the absolute horrific conditions for people and the families of people lying on trolleys in UHL which has now become a fertile ground for drug addicts to target elderly people who are vulnerable to having their possessions and medications pilfered due to the uncontrolled environment that staff, patients and relatives have to share.
“The people of the Mid West have no faith in the safety of attending UHL. They are refusing to go to Hospital unless they are very very ill.”