Aontú TD for Mayo, Paul Lawless, has hit back at comments by the Health Minister today in which she suggested that the industrial action / ‘work to rule’ policy of nurses across the country was leading to the trolley crisis.
Speaking today, Deputy Lawless said: “We have 23 patients on trolleys in Mayo University Hospital. We’ve had a collapse in recruitment in recent years, and now we have a situation where there is effectively a recruitment freeze in place across the west. Earlier this week we had a situation where the HSE came out and advised people in Mayo not to go to hospital unless absolutely necessary because of long wait times and huge numbers in the emergency department. We were also told that elective surgeries in Castlebar had been cancelled or postponed”.
Deputy Lawless continued: “All week I’ve been contacted by people affected by the recruitment issues. People who are seeking employment with the HSE in Mayo – some of whom have signed contracts but their start dates have been pushed out indefinitely due to delays on the part of the Minister’s own Department in approving their employment under the newly-introduced recruitment pay-bill requirements. So the Minister’s department is causing delays to the recruitment of badly needed staff in Mayo, while she is going on the airwaves to say that it’s the industrial action by the hardworking nurses which is leading to the crisis in our hospital”.
“Work to Rule is a form of industrial action – but it is a very mild and reasonable type of action. It’s not a full on strike. With ‘work to rule’ nurses simply do the work that is in their contracts – they don’t stay late, or do things that are beyond their pay rate or contract terms. These frontline workers who the Minister has today directed blame towards are working and are fulfilling every single duty outlined in their employment contracts. It would be more in the Minister’s line to actually walk into her own government department and sort out the delays with the approval of the recruitment under the pay-bill requirements. The Minister must accept her portion of the blame, and work to fix these recruitment delays”, concluded Lawless.
