An industrial dispute which means ambulances sometimes have to bypass St Columcille's Hospital in Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, is about to enter its third month.
The dispute results from objections by theatre nurses to an on-call system which, they say, means they cannot have a social life.
Some days theatre nurses are not available after 4.30 p.m. and patients have to be brought to St Vincent's University Hospital for emergency surgery instead.
The Labour Court recently recommended that nurses return to work on the basis of an earlier offer from management. Management is to staff up to eliminate excessive on-call commitments by the end of the year.
However, the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) disagrees with management as to what the terms of the earlier offer were. Management in the East Coast Area Health Board says the INO has got clarification, but the INO says clarification provided yesterday is incomplete.
Meanwhile, management says there is no threat to the well-being of patients.
It costs just under £1,000 to treat each patient on the waiting list for the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin. Last year the hospital got an extra £634,000 from the Eastern Regional Health Authority for an extra 700 procedures under the waiting list initiative.
The Department of Health and Children has approved a redevelopment programme for the hospital, which opened in 1897, but plans to redevelop the main operating theatres inside the main building on Adelaide Road have run into problems because it is a listed building.
The hospital is planning to carry out 6,960 in-patient procedures this year, nearly 600 more than in 2000.
The number of people waiting for hip operations in the Midland Health Board region has fallen from 203 at the end of 1998 to 107 last year. However, this is almost exactly the number of people who were waiting for operations at the end of 1992. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in the number of operations last year (254) compared to 1998 (162) or 1992 (116).
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