This comes as the INMO has joined other unions in hospital protests over the past month, calling for an end to the obstacles to recruitment laid out in the HSE’s 2024 Pay and Numbers Strategy.
The INMO has also commenced a ballot of its members in relation to potential industrial action in response to these obstacles to recruitment.
It states that the strategy’s suppression of all posts that were vacant at the end of 2023 has led to the elimination of around 2,000 much-needed nursing and midwifery posts, and that this is seriously affecting care standards and overcrowding across the health service.
The most overcrowded hospitals so far this year have been:
- University Hospital Limerick: (18,944 patients)
- Cork University Hospital: (10,923 patients)
- University Hospital Galway: (9,388 patients)
- Sligo University Hospital: (6,321 patients)
- St. Vincent’s University Hospital: (5,664 patients)
INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said:
Sadly, this figure comes as no surprise today. We have been warning for months that the chronic problems in the health service will only be exacerbated by the suppression of posts and the implementation of recruitment caps, and unfortunately we have once again been proven right.
The HSE and the department of health make repeated commitments to making the health service safer, but this is directly contradicted by their actions in terms of this recruitment policy.
INMO members are now constantly scrambling to provide safe care to an increasing number of patients, in environments that are not safely staffed. This often means working long hours without breaks, working extra hours and contending with unmanageable workloads in highly stressful environments.
The HSE and Government have effectively accepted recruitment processes will be slowed down to a crawling pace when replacing staff who retire or go on long-term leave, and in the meantime it is up to the existing staff to fill in the gaps.
As the political system turns its focus to polling day, all candidates who aspire to be in government must commit to expediting the passage of the Patient Safety (Licensing) Bill which would put safe staffing on a legislative basis.
Our members have been pushed to the brink over the last five years and for many of them seeing another annual report of 100,000 patients being treated in inappropriate spaces before we even reach November, is simply unacceptable.