Nenagh group join protest over UHL overcrowding

The ‘Drive to Save Lives Protest’ by the Midwest Hospital Campaign took place across three counties of the region on Saturday last, April 13.

The event was organised not only to protest the ongoing Emergency Department (ED) crisis at the University Hospital Limerick (UHL) but to commemorate the 15th anniversary of what the campaign describes as the failed reconfiguration of Emergency Department (ED) services in the Midwest. Just after 11am on Saturday, the Celtic Souls Motorcycle Club from Limerick led a convoy of around 20 vehicles from Nenagh to Limerick. The convoy was organised by the Nenagh Needs Its A&E Campaign, which described the three expert bikers as heroes for their work in safely keeping the convoy together on the journey from Springfort, along the old N7, through Limerick City, and onward to Heuston Hall in Raheen, the headquarters of HSE CEO, Bernard Gloster.

CONVOYS

The Nenagh protesters were joined by two other vehicle convoys, from Clare and Limerick, the two other counties most seriously affected by the 15-year trolley crisis. Charlotte Keane, Noeleen Moran and Tanya DeVito McMahon of Nenagh Needs Its A&E, all spoke on behalf of the three regions of the Midwest Hospital Campaign. Ken McCarthy and Richard Devereaux, members of the original anti-reconfiguration campaign from the late-2000s, also spoke of the pain and suffering caused by the crisis.

EMOTIONAL GESTURE

In a highly emotional moment, many members of the large protest group laid flowers at the door of Heuston Hall to commemorate those who suffered and died on UHL trolleys during the past 15 years. Nenagh Needs Its A&E campaigner Conor Reidy stated: “This is the fight of our generation in the Midwest. Campaigns in different guises and forms have protested this disastrous reconfiguration going back to the late-2000s, when it was still a proposal. The people spoke back then and they told the political power brokers and the medical elite that this was a bad idea. Nobody listened. The result of not being listened to has caused a decade-and-a-half of pure misery for users of the emergency department services as well as those who work there.”

Mr Reidy added: “During the past five years, as the crisis escalated to dangerous and overwhelming levels, we now see a growing list of high profile cases of people who have lost their lives on UHL trolleys because of overcrowding.

“The stories of suffering we in the Midwest Hospital Campaign hear on a weekly basis could fill many books. It exposes the true horror, fear and danger experienced on a daily basis because of this failed policy. And still, 15 years later, the power brokers and medical elite are not listening.”