Nenagh Cllr Seamie Morris says UHL are ‘playing with fire’ due to breaches of the regulations around overcrowding in the Emergency Department.
UHL is consistently the most overcrowded in the country and Cllr Morris has been calling for the Fire Chief in Limerick to make a statement on whether it is safe.
He says after a number of Freedom-Of-Information requests he’s been given some worrying stats including the fact that UHL which serves north Tipperary has been under a fire safety notice from December 2018 to March 2025 due to safety fears.
Cllr Morris says the local Fire Chief has also threatened to take the hospital in Limerick which serves north Tipp to court over the issue.
He says: ”Information has been released that showed that my fears were right. I was right to have those fears because the management of UHL have broken their own agreement with the Fire Chief at least 20 times in 2017. Sometimes they had twice the amount of people on trolleys in the ED itself.
”They had an allowance for the maximum of 29 trolleys. There was days in there that had over 50 people on trolleys by the ED.”
Meanwhile, 93 patients admitted to UHL today had no beds
It’s almost double the number on trolley at the next most overcrowded hospital in the country – UHG in Galway at 51.
The INMO says there were 419 patients waiting for beds nationwide.
18 of those were at TUH in Clonmel.
