People's protest on Limerick streets is 'only the beginning'

ORGANISERS of the University Hospital Limerick protest have vowed that last Saturday's march through the city centre is "only the beginning".

Saturday saw one of the largest protests to ever take to the streets of Limerick where concerned and angry members of the public voiced their anger over the current conditions at UHL.

The 11,000 people that attended the march raised questions about the current overcrowding crisis at UHL and called on the government and the HSE to reinstate the Emergency Departments at St John’s, Ennis and Nenagh hospitals.

“If our politicians don’t do anything regarding the UHL crisis we will have no choice but to up the pressure,” said Mid-West Hospital Campaign co-ordinator Mary Cahillane.

“And if that doesn’t do anything then we’re looking at more protests and other actions that we can take,” she added.

This Tuesday, there were 60 patients waiting on trolleys at UHL according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation trolley watch figures as overcrowding in the Limerick hospital continues.

“We’re having a meeting next week between all of us who organised the protest,” Ms Cahillane said.

“We put a call out at the protest for people to email their TDs. Some of those replies are coming back to us now.

“An awful lot of the TDs turned up to the protest. We know many of the TDs are concerned about the issue… What is very hard to do is get a straight answer from these politicians as to whether they support the reopening of the Emergency Departments in the Mid-West,” Ms Cahillane added.

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Mike Daly, organiser of the protest addressed the crowd last Saturday. “Thank you all for coming here today. I hope it results with the HSE reversing their decision to close the three A&Es and reopen them.

“But if they don’t then this is not the end, this is only the beginning of a campaign of people power that will force change in the healthcare in the Mid-West.

“For 14 years we have watched as they have closed our A&Es, robbed us of hospital beds and watched our people die on trolleys. Well no more, the time has come for change because we deserve better, our health system deserves better,” Mr Daly added.

Following the protest, the Limerick Leader spoke to Fianna Fáil Minister of State Niall Collins who believes the protest was an "absolutely powerful demonstration of how people feel".

“The current government since we came to office in the last two and a half years has been building capacity, hiring more consultants, more doctors, more nurses, putting on additional places for medicine in college…

“I know people are calling for the A&E in Nenagh and Ennis to be reopened, they were closed at a time on the advice of experts who said that they weren’t clinically safe environments for people to present,” Deputy Collins added.

Mr Daly believes that the A&Es being clinically unsafe is a “load of rubbish. That’s just an excuse,” Mr Daly said.

“If they can put billions together to build a new  children’s hospital in Dublin, they can get in enough contractors to make any A&E safe and operable. The money is there, there’s no excuse,” Mr Daly added.

“The people in charge need to step in immediately to alleviate the waiting times. Everything the government put in place may be good in the long-term but we need action now.”

Ms Cahillane said that the protest last Saturday wasn’t the largest health-based protest in Limerick.

“We had a protest of 20,000 people in Limerick in 1988 when they closed Barrington’s Hospital.

“We had small protests when they closed the A&Es in 2009. We had a protest in 2020 and we had our protest on Saturday.

“Since 1988 the people of Limerick have been protesting about healthcare. I think that’s quite shocking. Generations of families have been let down by the system because even when they closed Barrington’s Hospital we still haven’t replaced those beds,” Ms Cahillane added.

Limerick city and Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan was at the protest on Saturday and said it was “great to see people come out over the crisis we’ve had in our hospitals.”

“The amalgamation [of A&Es] back in 2009 clearly hasn’t worked… 18,000 people were on trolleys last year and this month is going to be record-breaking again.

“I think [the protest] is a wake-up call for the government but I think they’ve been woken up since the Christmas crisis… The winter plan didn’t work

“We need to retain the staff we have in the hospitals, that’s crucial number one, they’re leaving in droves. We need to ensure we can recruit the additional number of staff we need for the hospitals and we need to fast-track here in UHL, there’s a proposal for three 96-bed units, one is under construction but we need the other two to get the commitment from the government that it will be funded…” Deputy Quinlivan added.

The Mid-West Hospital Campaign would like to thank everyone who came out and supported Saturday’s protest.

“We are going to continue on with this campaign,” Ms Cahillane said. “This campaign is not going away.

“We are going to be here for as long as it takes to get better health care in the Mid-West.”