310 acute hospital beds for Limerick
This is part of a national plan announced by Minister Stephen Donnelly
MINISTER for Health, Stephen Donnelly, has announced that Limerick hospitals are to get 310 acute beds, as part of a national plan.
The majority will go to University Hospital Limerick (UHL) with 268, while St John’s Hospital in the city centre will get 42 acute beds.
This is part of a national plan for 3,352 acute beds - of which 355 are replacement beds.
If the hospital beds currently under construction are added into the mix, this means that the total number of new hospital beds to be delivered around the country by 2031 is 4,367.
Fianna Fáil Minister and Limerick TD Niall Collins welcomed the announcement.
He said: "In total in the HSE Mid-West area, a total of 156 new beds are planned between 2025 and 2028 and a further 42 are planned between 2028 and 2031, bringing the total to 198. These new beds are much needed in the county and I know they will be of enormous comfort to families in the region.
"Delivering healthcare for everyone is a cornerstone of Fianna Fail's approach in government. We are improving access to health services, with reductions in waiting times and waiting lists, lower costs for treatment, more entitlement to free GP services than ever before, and Ireland’s first ever Women’s Health Strategy.
"We’ve cut the amount of money families need to spend on healthcare, abolished hospital charges, introduced free contraception, reduced monthly medicines bills and rolled out free IVF.
"Today's announcement is further evidence that Fianna Fáil is committed to tackling the issues we are facing in our healthcare system head-on."
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) now says that the new beds will only be effective if they are coupled with “correct and safe staffing levels.”
INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: “For every acute medical/surgical bed, it requires a minimum of one additional nurse per bed and higher numbers for high dependency and complex needs and seven additional nurses per bed for intensive care unit beds. To realistically achieve this increase we must significantly increase undergraduate nursing and midwifery places and introduce bespoke retention measures to ensure nurses and midwives stay in the system.
“It has never been more obvious that the HSE’s recruitment embargo must be immediately lifted for nursing and midwifery grades.
“There is little point in announcing additional beds without a workforce plan in place. The HSE and Department of Health have yet to publish the funded workforce plan for 2024 and we are now at the end of the fifth month of this year. If this is the methodology that will continue for workforce planning, it is hard to have confidence in the HSE’s ability to deliver these additional beds.”
Minister Stephen Donnelly said: “I initiated and developed this plan as I recognise that we need to increase our bed capacity to meet the healthcare needs of our growing and ageing population.
“Delivery of this plan will result in the equivalent bed capacity of six large hospitals opening and will be a gamechanger for patients and healthcare workers.”