Recommendations in the Government-backed Hanly report on hospital reorganisation are probably medico-legally unsafe, a hospital consultant, has warned.
Dr Christine O'Malley, a geriatrician at Nenagh General Hospital, told a rally attended by up to 10,000 people in Nenagh on Saturday that the plans in the report to close A&E units in smaller hospitals such as Nenagh and Ennis and transfer emergency trauma cases to Limerick Regional Hospital could put patients at risk and result in hospitals being sued.
Furthermore she said she believed the plan was possibly in breach of EU guidelines.
She told the crowd it was a daily struggle to get beds in Limerick Regional Hospital for some of the sickest patients in Nenagh who needed to be transferred there. "If they can't take our sickest patients where are they going to fit the thousands of others who will now have to be transferred there under Hanly," she asked.
"On trolleys," was the response from the crowd.
A Tipperary-born nurse, Ms Margaret Carroll, who works in A&E in Dublin's Beaumont Hospital, told the rally patients were told they could expect a better service when three hospitals in Dublin came together to form Beaumont 15 years ago. However the reality was that there were now patients waiting an average of three to four days and nights on trolleys in Beaumont's A&E in undignified conditions, she said. "They lie closer to a patient beside them than they would if they were beside their partner in a bed." Some were treated in ambulances because there was nowhere else to put them.
Ms Carroll said she believed that what had happened in Dublin would happen in the Tipperary/Limerick region if the Hanly report was implemented.
Mr David King of the Nenagh Hospital Action Group warned the Government it wouldn't "ram Hanly down our necks".
"Bertie has this idea where he's going to kick the people and kick his TDs into line. He will not bully and intimidate or push around the people of North Tipperary, Ennis or any other hospital he's going to close because we are the people and we won't put up with it and we will give him his answer. Remember the faces of those people that supported this Hanly report. Remember if they support it they will have nothing on their CV when they come to your door the next time," he said, to loud applause. He said the people of the area wanted to retain a hospital service where people were treated with respect.
Following the rally, representatives of hospital action groups from across the State, including Mayo, Monaghan, Mallow and Ennis, met and formed a national steering group to fight the implementation of Hanly.