State-of-art maternity unit lies idle as health board awaits funding

Two new delivery suites at Letterkenny General Hospital are being used as offices because the Department of Health has not yet provided the funding to commission them, the North Western Health Board confirmed.

The facilities are part of a new maternity unit at the hospital, which was completed 18 months ago, and which comprises a maternity suite, obstetrics theatre, recovery area and four delivery suites.

Irish Nurses' Organisation industrial officer Mr Noel Treanor said it was a "little bit surreal" to see clerical staff working in an area with state-of-the-art lighting and equipment. Meanwhile, women were giving birth in curtained-off areas where privacy and dignity was being compromised, he said.

Mr Treanor, who believes the failure to open the unit is a staffing issue, hopes to have a meeting later this month with the director of nursing at the hospital.

"I have been through the new suites and it is fairly bizarre to see offices in an area which is a bit like Star Trek with all the lighting and equipment," he said.

Women are delivering babies in a four-bed ward divided by curtains, and if for any reason an emergency section is needed, they are brought up two floors to the theatre, he said.

A spokeswoman for the North Western Health Board said it was not a simple staffing issue. The board is bound by a ceiling on staff numbers and it would be transferring personnel to the unit.

She said it had taken advantage of the decision to build a new renal dialysis unit at the hospital, and had incorporated the new maternity unit into the building project when funding was being secured.

The Department had not yet provided the funds to commission the maternity unit but an application had been made. The board could not say when the unit would operate, but the spokeswoman agreed that the existing facilities were "in need of improvement".

There were 1,700 births in the hospital last year.

On the fact that women were giving birth in such circumstances, Mr Treanor said: "There are issues of privacy and dignity not to mention the worry of cross infection," he said.