Night sister Catherine Galvin, who has worked seven of the last eight Christmas Days, knows better than to expect peace and goodwill tomorrow night.
Christmas at casualty, she says, is anything but festive.
"They start coming in at around 5 p.m. and keep coming until five the next morning. A lot of stabbings, people throwing each other down stairs, family arguments, people who don't see each other from one end of the year to the next, going crazy, killing each other. "Loneliness is a factor too. There are a lot of attempted suicides. But alcohol is the biggest problem of all."
She recalls one "really horrific" incident two years ago when a family feud spilled over into the A&E ward. "Thankfully, we have a good security presence here, and a good relationship with the guards at Santry, so we are able to defuse such situations. But they can be scary."
According to Women's Aid, incidents of domestic violence tend to go in cycles over the Christmas period. "Ironically, Christmas Day might be the one day of the year when things go better in families because there are more people visiting the home, and they can act as a deterrent against violence," says Ms Teresa O'Donnell, communications manager for the organisation. "What we tend to see is more people contacting us after St Stephen's Day. That's when family relatives have gone home, and people go back into their little worlds with an attitude of "now that Christmas is over it's back to normal'."
Christmas places "huge pressures" on families in which there is violence. "Women in refuges feel under massive pressure to go home and be the perfect family for the day," she adds.
Women's refuges will be open throughout the State tomorrow along with emergency health services. However, it is the A&E wards which will pick up most of the slack over the coming week as primary care services are scaled down for the holidays.
"We really have to keep things going for the whole health care system over Christmas and New Year," says A&E consultant Mr Aidan Gleeson.
"The majority of services, out-patients, GPs, shut up shop. As a result, we get a lot of minor stuff - people who ring their GP on St Stephen's Day and are told they'll be seen by a deputy in five or six hours. A lot will go down to A&E instead."
