Sinn Féin’s Health spokesperson says University Hospital Waterford is ‘maxed out’ with a lack of capacity and infrastructure in many critical areas.
David Cullinane says the hospital has had no available infrastructure to support any additional staff or services such as no offices, outpatient rooms, diagnostic slots, theatre slots, day ward, or inpatient beds since the 17th of January.
He says there are no available staffing to support any additional clinical staff or new services.
The Sinn Féin deputy, who’s based in the South East, says the hospital needs more capacity before it leads to further problems in the future; “The hospital has sought 24 consultant packages as they’ve called them, which is not just 24 consultants but all of the ancillary staff and they’ve costed that at about €35million, that’s what they say they need but they also need additional surgical capacity, office accommodation, diagnostic capacity and other additional capacity and infrastructure as well so it’s a real difficulty and a serious issue and obviously if additional capacity isn’t put in you have a hospital that’s maxed out then that is going to create problems at some point in the future”.
