Healthcare Crisis and Possible INMO Strike
“Our healthcare crisis continues to spiral out of control”, says People Before Profit Galway representative Adrian Curran.
Figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) show nearly 12,000 patients went without a bed in Irish hospitals last month. Throughout 2022 a total of 121,000 patients went without a bed with around 27,000 of them being children. 2022 was the worst year for hospital overcrowding on record.
“As this crisis unfolded over the last couple months, the government congratulated itself for ‘saving’ €5.2 billion and put it in a ‘rainy day’ fund. They seem to be pretending like we don’t have multiple rainy days all happening at once. What with healthcare, housing, and cost of living to name a few. ” states Curran. “If this doesn’t highlight that the government parties of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Greens don’t care about ordinary people, what does?”
“However, there are solutions,” continued Curran. “People Before Profit has campaigned for years for the private hospital sector to be nationalised and integrated into the public system. We need a robustly funded national healthcare service.”
We need to pay healthcare staff decent wages and ensure that staffing levels in hospitals meet the levels needed for safe working conditions. The INMO is beginning consultations with its members, including those at University Hospital Galway. It is clear that workers in our hospitals are being pushed past their limits.
INMO President Karen McGowan recently stated, “Nurses and midwives expect and deserve to work in a safe practice environment in which they can deliver the safe and excellent care they are trained to provide”
It is time we listen to our healthcare workers, look at the stark data, and abandon the foolish ideologies of the past which are preventing the HSE from providing the best quality healthcare they are able to give.