Wexford Sinn Féin has welcomed news that work will commence on the proposed extension to Wexford General Hospital in the spring. Cllr Anthony Kelly said that he still had grave concerns regarding the staffing of the new facilities however, and is worried that this will impact detrimentally on our 24 hour A&E service in the county.
Cllr Kelly said;
“Wexford Sinn Féin welcomes the news that work will begin on this vital project in the coming months. It is overdue, but we always expected some hold ups. The thing that worries me most is will we have the staff to man these new facilities? In fact, will we even have the staff to maintain our current 24 hour A&E unit?”
“Recent HSE figures show that 3,500 hospital staff will have left positions in Irish hospitals between last September and the end of February next, including 1700 nurses and 50 consultants. I would have huge concerns that this exodus of front line staff coupled with the HSE’s draconian recruitment embargo will have a devastating affect on our county hospital. Frontline staff cannot be maintained with this level of redundancies.”
“Minister Reilly has made a point of highlighting his role in tackling problems with bureaucracy at the top of the HSE. What he won’t tackle is the deplorable situation where 110 senior managers are on salaries exceeding €110,000 per annum while funding is not made available to hire new frontline staff.”
“Like Fianna Fail before them, our new government are playing with people’s lives by refusing to tackle the obscene defects within our health system. The new facilities at Wexford General Hospital, while sincerely welcomed by Sinn Féin, will be nothing but hollow shells of concrete without the dedicated staff to run them.”
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