*Senator Timmy Dooley (FF). Photograph: Joe Buckley
A CLARE SENATOR is seeking a debate with his party colleague, the Minister for Health over ongoing issues at University Hospital Limerick (UHL).
Senator Timmy Dooley (FF) asked for a debate to be arranged in the Seanad with Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly (FF) to discuss ongoing issues at UHL “with particular focus on the deaths of a number of people in recent times”.
Speaking in the Seanad, Senator Dooley commented, “A report was issued recently by the former Chief Justice. It is a harrowing read into the death of Aoife Johnston. It must be harrowing for her family, friends and community. The troubling thing that came out of the report is that there is still the potential for this to happen. There were failures and abject failures across the piece. There are some learnings.
“There has been some significant investment in the hospital in the last four years since the Minister Donnelly, came to the brief. A debate here might be helpful insofar as we can to try to take the politics out of it because this really is about people who have lost their lives unnecessarily through the failures of others. It is always easy to lay the blame at one Minister when there are 110,000,115,000 or 120,000 people working in the service.
“Yes, there has to be political accountability too for the continued lack of investment in that hospital and in the region, but it would be remiss of us not to try to find a united way forward to see if we can get to the nub of what actually happened. Are there cultural issues? Are there management issues? Are there interpersonal issues? Are there problems between the various different silos that exist in the hospital? It cannot just be about one individual, one person or one discipline,” he added.
“I hope we can have that debate as soon as possible. We owe it to the memory of Aoife Johnston and the others who have been failed by the system. The difficulty we have is that there has been more than a fair share of failures. There will always be an element of misadventure in medicine, and I think people understand and get that, but when they see a consistent trend then there is a need to look at all aspects and facets of the operation of the hospital. I would appreciate if the Leader could arrange that at the earliest possible opportunity,” Dooley concluded.
