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AN UNOFFICIAL WORK stoppage on the part of agency medical workers with the HSE threatened to shut an emergency department in Co Meath this evening as locum staff at hospitals across the country went on wildcat strike.
It’s understood that a number of agency staff did not show up for work at Our Lady’s Hospital Navan today, and that the emergency department there came close to shutting due to a lack of necessary cover.
The unofficial actions on behalf of agency staff at hospitals around Ireland stems from a drive by the HSE to bring parity between the pay levels of its own medical workers and those on agency contracts.
That drive has manifested itself in a move to cut pay for agency workers.
Now, the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) has suggested that the party at fault for the strikes is the HSE, saying that the action is a “result of the implementation of a HSE directive intended to cap the pay of locum doctors” and has left a number of hospital emergency departments “very short of key medical staff”.
“Clearly, questions need to be asked as to why it is that such a high proportion of the medical workforce are employed as locums (temporary replacements for permanent workers) and, in particular, why so many local graduates choose to work as locums rather than take posts on standard contracts,” the IAEM said in a statement.
As long as regular contract posts are so unattractive there will be continue to be a shortfall in medical rosters in many of the country’s emergency departments. Allowing a situation to develop where regular medical employment is so unrewarding and unsatisfactory that so many choose this alternative is yet one more failing of those with political and managerial responsibility for the health service.
Navan’s general hospital has a particularly high proportion of non-HSE workers employed there.
Contingency
“The HSE has been advised that certain agency medical staff have indicated that they may not turn up for their rostered duty this week. There are well-established and agreed procedures to deal with this,” a spokesperson for the HSE earlier told TheJournal.ie.
The HSE would urge all staff to comply with these agreed procedures. These procedures are in place in the healthcare environment in order to ensure continuity of care to patients and clients.
The spokesperson said that the HSE is working with hospital groups to ensure “the continued delivery of care on a contingency basis”.
“Hospitals will continue to work with the contracted employment agencies to source staff and will continue to assess the position over the coming days,” they said.
Despite this, the situation at Navan Hospital appears to be on a knife-edge at present.
“Navan Hospital is particularly exposed due to the high proportion of agency doctors in our accident and emergency,” local Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín told TheJournal.ie.
“I am told that there is a significant threat that the A&E could be closed this evening,” he said, adding that he had heard from the HSE that the situation is “fluid”.
I am told that there are contingency plans being developed to try and keep the emergency department open but that the outcome of this is not certain.
Once a closure of a service occurs within the HSE there are real fears for it not reopening. I am calling on the Minister for Health Simon Harris to personally intervene and guarantee that Meath has a functioning emergency department tonight, tomorrow and into the future.
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Dublin birds are notoriously aggressive
@Fergus Murphy: Never a truer word written!
Ah would you ever stop saying gulls are vicious predators. Everytime I’m out in Howth I get the “Those are flying Rats” chat off one of the locals.
DON’T BUY A HOUSE NEAR THE SEA OR A BUSY FISHING HARBOUR IF YOU DON’T LIKE GULLS. The gulls in the centre city are looking for your good not your fingers.
@John Doyle: food
@John Doyle: to be fair seagulls are all over the place in places like tallaght and further West
@John Doyle: I live in Howth so am one of those locals you refer to. The thing is that us locals know not to feed the seagulls unlike the tourists who feed them their Beshoffs/Burdocks/Cafe Caira and then they wonder why they’re swarmed and getting in the middle of attacks!
@Lauren Steele: if your one of the locals who complain about having gulls around the harbour then yes I am referring to you. I wouldn’t buy a home in the Serengeti and complain about a heard of Zebra running around
@John Doyle: 2/10 poor effort
@John Doyle:
Your attitude would change sharpish if seagulls started nesting on your road (one doesn’t have to buy a house near the sea for this). The racket out of them from very early morning (5am) is awful. There wasn’t this many around before now, they’re seriously multiplying, moving into new estates/roads every year. You couldn’t leave a kitten in the garden, and you’d be worried about letting young kids have their lunch/snack outside. They’ve become a pest.
@james boylan: all birds make a racket at sunrise.
I grew up beside a river a ducks could make an awful racket, I have four hens out the back yard and they also can make an awful racket.
Watining to kill birds because they make noise is nonsense.
As far scared to leave kids outside, honestly you must be having a laugh.
@Barry Somers:
All birds don’t make a racket like them. Have you been to the likes of Howth seafront, it would be impossible to have a picnic on many days. Have you not seen any photos of people that were cut/injured from the gulls there?
@james boylan: injuries normally happen when the gull swoops down to take a sandwich or ice cream from someone’s hand and the person moves at the last second. It’s an accident and not deliberate on the gulls part. You would have to question why people walk the streets waving tasty morsels of food in the air instead of sitting down to eat it at a table indoors. It is bound to attract the unwanted attention of gulls.
@Sean: victim blaming :)
Reminds me of the time the well to do brigade wanted a seal cull at the 40 foot because the seals were interrupting their swimming.. Anyway there wouldn’t be as many gulls if people knew how to put their rubbish in the bins..
@David Garland: yeah but you know they start with petty crime and next they are selling drugs and pimping. Then the government has to waste money on special garda divisions to work on them…
@David Garland: You are absolutely correct. Those birds are there only because there’s food there.
Dirty Dublin.
Clean Dublin, no seagulls!!!
@Michael Geraghty Bodycoach: it’ll be soon like gulls in the hood
Stop leaving food around the city. Then they will not be hanging around so much.
One took a burger from my then gfs hand on Grafton street. I was impressed.
Would make more sense if they tackled human gangs in Dublin
Love the gulls. Spend a lot of time watching them and the other birds that frequent the back of our house. It’s quite funny to watch the juvenile gulls mithering the adult gulls. Leave them alone, is what I say.
@Maria Hickey-Fagan: Agree with you
Seen one swoop in a take a man’s Bunsen burger just as he was going for the first bite…. I’d pay to see it again….. More power to the gulls!!!
@Cryptoalcho: I read that as bunsen burner first and had a picture of some Doc Brown looking character flaming the bejayzus out of a gull as it attacked his chemistry experiment. Bunsen burgers are tasty though. Gulls know their grub.
A toddler with a croissant? The boom is back
@james darcy: I had a cross aunt … hated her !
I saw one pick up a live rat by its tail and bring him to a roof top out of view only to have another 6-8 gulls swoop in to finish the job. What a way to go…
@Neil Mac: Circle of life. Never thought of them doing rodent control.
Short of putting a net canopy over the whole island there’s not much we can do. People claim to love wildlife until they’re affected by it then that wildlife is labelled a pest. Gulls are opportunistic, if there’s food around they’ll try to take it.
St Stephen’s Green has been destroyed by them. A cull is the only answer.
@Ronan Fahy: why is there always one on crutches! So true.
It’s the shouting at each other that really gets to me, how do they not see the wrong in what they’re doing? I don’t know if it was society that failed them but they certainly are failing society.
@Bill Clay: well done journal. Delete a perfectly reasonable comment.
Hope you’re proud of yourselves
@Bill Clay: I would imagine they probably deleted the comment because it’s got nothing to do with this story.
@Bill Clay: suppression of opinion is the cornerstone of narrative manipulation and fascism Bill. It’s almost as though The Journal doesn’t want to betaken seriously.
Thought Paul Williams would be all over this one
@Gerard Gildea: The Fax machine in Harcourt Street is knackered. Paul is flying solo.
They robbed my subway and left me with a bruise on my face :(
Don’t eat food outside!
I would love it if seagulls were my biggest worry.
CAREFUL NOW!!!
Listen, Alfred Hitchcock tried warning us, nobody cared, now fgs WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN !
Gulls are more and more flying and feeding inland, why? because there is little food left in the seas for them, bird population worldwide has halved since the 1970′s, garden bird numbers are plummeting, native curlews are all but extinct, worms are seriously threatened, numbers plummeting, you see very few flies any more, why? pesticides, don’t think the Minister for the Environment gives too hoots about wildlife and nature, trees, ditches & hedgerows are being demolished, roadside verges are destroyed with litter, the countryside is sterilised, a dead whate washed up recently died of starvation, it had 40 kg of plastic in its stomach, cull the gulls, kill the seals because they are eating the sea fish…………God help the up and coming generation, they wont have much to look forward to in the future.
@Charles Coughlan: certainly the small garden birds took a hit from magpies in more recent years… and you are correct, as we change the environment we change the balance of things.
I’ve heard of horse wishers,but the last paragraph sound a bit wacky.
Think they’re aggressive now? Wait till May when the mating season kicks off.
Send out the vegans. The gulls will appreciate the protein.
Cull the Gull?
Landgulls they are….
I’ve heard of horse whisperers but the last paragraph sound a bit wacky.
If there wasn’t so much rubbish in the city for them to feed off they might move on,like the rats the city,it’s a big food bank for all animals now with the dirt of the place.
Why cant we just release a few eagles in the city, kill and scare them all off
Deport them!!
The poor toddler. Headed out for a stroll and to pick up a coffee thought to himself “i fancy a pastry” then a greedy seagull swopps in and ruins his morning. He probably still hasnt recovered
Maybe you should blame the EU for that, fishermen are longer able to discard fish into the sea, which is what the gulls depended on. So they are coming in land looking for food. They are hungry and we are to blame for it.
These dinosaurs are now showing their true colours… scavengers at their best, looking for food among the human waste. It is always hard to get a balance between the desire to allow nature to thrive and live the sort of life us humans desire.
I suppose it is only when one is directly affected by the gulls that one can comprehend the fear they can instill…. but have we allowed the gulls to become human friendly or are gulls evolving to take over the universe (well the city streets anyway).
While some I say in jest the truth of the matter is that sea gull are evolving to become land birds as well and aggressive ones as well.
If the city wasn’t full of rubbish for them to eat they wouldn’t be here,like the rats that are everywhere feeding off the dirt in the kip,
Chekhov ! The lot of ya !
These people are idiots, they’re only birds!
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