Today’s protests will call for the reopening of the emergency departments at Nenagh, Ennis, and St John’s hospitals.
The downgrading of hospital services in the mid-west has led to consistent overcrowding at UHL – which serves North Tipp, Clare and Ennis.
That’s the claim as a demonstration gets underway in Limerick this morning over ED overcrowding.
It’s highlighting a government decision in 2009, to downgrade Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s hospitals and to close the emergency departments.
Noeleen Moran, a coordinator of the mid-west Hospital Campaign, says the overcrowding situation has gone on far too long:
“People are dying as a result of the overcrowding in the emergency departments, and those people are people living in our communities, people that matter to us.
“It’s really not good enough. It’s been going on far, far too long and that’s what we hope to achieve from today, that we will get our politicians to start speaking up on this issue and to call for the reopening of our services in Nenagh, Ennis and St. John’s. ”
The Limerick protest began outside the City Hall on Merchants Quay at 11am and will be followed by 17 other protests across the country at 1pm to demand an end to the trolley crisis.
It’ll include demonstrations outside Our Lady’s Hospital Navan, UHL and Cork University Hospital.
