A new organisation lobbying for better conditions in accident and emergency departments has urged the Minister for Health, Ms Harney, to set target times for the length of time patients should have to spend on trolleys in A&E.
Patients Together wants no patient to have to wait more than four hours on a trolley and insists this be less for those left in chairs.
Furthermore, when it met Ms Harney yesterday, its members requested an independent health and safety audit be immediately carried out on all A&E departments across the State. It also wants the audit's findings made public. Patients Together has also asked that the Minister join it to make unannounced visits to A&E units to see conditions for herself.
After meeting Ms Harney on a day when there were another 157 patients on trolleys in A&E units across the State, group representatives expressed disappointment she had no "quick-fix" solutions to offer. She did say, however, that complaints about hygiene in overcrowded units would be addressed around the clock.
Ms Harney is also understood to have given a commitment that up to 30 unused beds at Dublin's Peamount Hospital will shortly be put in use as step-down beds for people fit for discharge from acute hospitals who have nowhere else to go.
Ms Janette Byrne, spokeswoman for Patients Together, said her group was not willing to continue to put up with the "horrendous conditions" in A&E. The Tánaiste, she said, had said finding solutions would take time. "The people on trolleys and chairs today don't have time." Animals, she said, received better treatment than did some patients in A&E.
She put it to Ms Harney that if there was a major accident or disaster in Dublin, the A&E units would not be able to cope. Ms Harney told her an emergency plan could be activated in such a situation. Ms Byrne said if there was such a plan it should be activated now "because there is an emergency today".
Ms Harney said later there was a positive exchange of views and she would consider their views when bringing forward a range of measures to ease pressure on A&Es in a few weeks time. She also plans to make private visits to hospitals to see conditions for herself.
Patients Together will hold another protest march through Dublin at 2 p.m. on this day week.