VERDICT: Taoiseach, Minister and HSE — We’re done in Limerick with apologies. Fix it.

SHAMEFUL. Simply shameful. 

It’s a word that runs across our front page this week. It is not the voice of one individual, but the collective voice of Limerick, including us here in the Limerick Leader.

As newspaper editors and reporters, impartiality is our duty. But in this case, there is no impartiality required. What has happened to the four beautiful, vibrant, young women on the front of our paper today is beyond debate. It is shameful.

Last Wednesday at the Coroner’s Court in Kilmallock, the harrowing details of 16-year-old Niamh McNally’s death emerged.

Niamh, from Bruff, was under the care of University Hospital Limerick - a place entrusted with minding and saving lives.

On the day Niamh died, her mother, Carolyn O’Neill, went to the shop and made a video call to check on her daughter. What she saw haunts her mind and ours too, now.

“There were mouthfuls and mouthfuls of blood,” Mrs O’Neill recalled at the inquest. Her daughter’s hair, mouth, and mattress were covered in blood. 

Just like Leona Cusack, 33, Aoife Johnston, 16, and Eve Cleary, 21, before her, Niamh was terrified.

READ ALSO: Four young women dead - catastrophic failures demand action on University Hospital Limerick now

While waiting for the ambulance, mother and daughter sat on the bed and cried. Niamh whispered: “Mammy, I thought I was going to die.” At UHL, they waited three hours before seeing a doctor.

Shortly before suffering a cardiac arrest, Niamh gasped: “Mammy, I can’t breathe.” Soon after, she was gone.

This tragedy was the fifth item on that evening’s RTE Six One News, following coverage of public finances, a fire in Hong Kong, migration reforms, and the Ukraine peace plan. But this was not just another story to be scanned and moved past. It was a young life lost in circumstances that demand accountability.

Sadly, repeated failings at University Hospital Limerick have led to “outrage fatigue”. The wider public have become desensitised to a litany of tragedies, HSE apologies, and reassurances that “lessons will be learned”.

While the recent opening of the new 96-bed block at UHL is a step forward, it does not even begin to erase the fear and distrust that now surround the hospital.

At 10.07pm on Tuesday night, just hours after our front page went to print, an email came into the newsroom inbox from the HSE urging people to first use the available alternatives where possible as "University Hospital Limerick (UHL) is currently experiencing huge demand for its services, with upwards of 350 people attending the Emergency Department in the past 24 hours".

Parents are scared to bring their children there. For older generations, the very mention of the letters UHL conjures huge anxiety. These corridors, meant to heal, have become a symbol of total vulnerability and, too often, loss.

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill’s Instagram post showing her visit to the hospital’s emergency department on Saturday, smiling alongside HSE CEO Bernard Gloster, will not allay that fear.  Given the reports on the hospital days previously, the optics of it, the two of them with wide smiles, were not great. Niamh’s story - a young girl coughing up blood and waiting hours for care - cannot be swept aside. 

Here in Limerick, we will not forget the faces of those lost, or the failures that contributed to their deaths.

An Taoiseach, Minister MacNeill, Mr Gloster, your duty is clear. The future of University Hospital Limerick must be made a priority. Immediate, decisive action on the future plan for the hospital’s expansion is required to prevent yet another tragedy. Every family, every child, every citizen of Limerick deserves more than apologies. They deserve a hospital that lives up to its name.

The deaths of those four young women is shameful. And until meaningful change happens, it will remain so.

Fix it.