“My mother got a bed after a while. She is in the maternity unit. She is 65,” said a woman with a smile. Her mother is not pregnant, but has cellulitis, a painful skin infection.
She was one of the patients waiting for a bed in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda this week. Another woman who was on a trolley in the emergency department from Monday until Wednesday said: "I heard from some staff here that the six floors are full of elderly patients who should be in nursing homes and that the hospital is being used as a nursing home."
Mayor of Drogheda Kevin Callan has welcomed an offer to the HSE from the D Hotel in Drogheda to make 40 bedrooms on two floors available immediately to accommodate people currently taking up beds in the hospital.
Manager of the hotel Rory Scott said, "There is a separate entrance and a separate lift. The beds would not be suitable but we can take them out. It is for respite and to try and get the emergency patients into the beds in the hospital.
“We have heating. We have water. We have bathrooms. It has to be better than a trolley on a corridor.”
Mr Scott said all he would ask for the two floors was “a nominal fee”.
Mr Callan blamed HSE bureaucracy for delays in releasing €25 million towards nursing home bed allocations and for Fair Deal delays.
“We talk about Hiqa standards for care of the elderly in nursing homes and [yet] there are people in the Lourdes Hospital at the minute who are bumper to bumper, head to toe, sleeping in the gynaecology ward, in office space – it is unbelievable and I firmly put the burden on the Minister, the management of the hospital, the HSE,” he said.