CITY TRIBUNE
Up to 200 a day attended Emergency Dept over Christmas
It will be the end of the month before the next tranche of beds are opened in the new 75-bed unit due to the difficulty in recruiting staff – which will only further exacerbate overcrowding.
General Manager of University Hospital Galway (UHG) Chris Kane said patients in the infection control ward were moved over to 25 of the single en suite rooms at the end of December. The new unit had been completed in mid-November.
However, plans to open the next 30 beds in the new unit have been put on hold until at least the end of January due to a shortage of staff.
St Dominick’s Ward was next due to be moved to the state-of-the-art unit.
She told Galway Bay FM that hospital management had sought approval for staff to manage 30 beds but will likely only have approval for 23 or 24 beds.
Conditions were again very difficult in the Emergency Department with 200 attendances on some days over the festivities. Many patients were presenting with respiratory and flu-like symptoms, she revealed.
The general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives’ Organisation (INMO) Liam Doran said his members did not blame local management for the severe shortage of staff which was significantly contributing to the overcrowding.
He said that 100 acute beds and over 200 nursing staff were required immediately to alleviate pressure at UHG.
Without improved conditions at the biggest hospital in the region, there would be continued problems attracting new nurses and retaining the ones already there.
Last year there were 80 vacancies for nursing staff in emergency departments nationally. Recent figures showed that had jumped to 140.
“Local management in Galway are dealing with the resources that are given to them. My organisation would say we need 100 more acute beds in Galway, 200-plus board nurses in Galway. Nobody is going to argue against that but nobody has a plan to deliver that . . . in terms of investment in capital infrastructure, building, or investing in staffing infrastructure,” he fumed.
“. . . They’re told they’re over the employment ceiling, they’re over the pay budget . . . all of this bureaucratic rubbish which ignores the reality that dozens of patients every morning are on trolleys and it’s short staffed.”
He predicted the situation with staffing would only get worse, pointing out that any manager had to go through up to eight layers of bureaucracy to get the authority from the national organisation of the Health Service Executive (HSE) to replace any staff member who had left.
“No nurse who has a choice will remain in Galway if they have an option to go elsewhere because of an excessive workload, constant overcrowding and a lack of respect from the health system as a whole towards their needs and their needs mirror the needs of patients which are being neglected – in capital letters – every day,” he complained.
The end of year figures from the INMO show there was an improvement at UHG’s emergency department compared to 2015 – 5,807 patients at UHG endured delays on a trolley as they awaited admission to a ward – down from 6,514 the year before.
A decision on a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed unit was due at the end of last March but an announcement on that decision has been postponed.
Ten years of pumping money into Galway city’s two public hospitals has resulted in fewer beds. The latest financial figures show that €109 million in capital projects had been spent at University Hospital Galway (UHG) and Merlin Park since 2006 while at the same time 157 fewer beds were now in the system.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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