UNIVERSITY Hospital Limerick’s (UHL) own Medical Board has warned that the risks to patient care at the hospital “remain intolerable and unacceptable”, with patients on trolleys everywhere.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives (INMO)Trolley count, taken at 8am on weekday mornings, showed 97 admitted patients waiting on trolleys for treatment this Monday, with figures regularly registering more than 100, despite a noticeable drop late last year after the new 96-bed block at the Dooradoyle hospital was opened.
Professor Joe Devlin, consultant physician and chairperson of the Medical Board, said the situation persists despite repeated warnings from frontline clinicians, hospital management, national oversight bodies, and patient advocates.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, he said that “there are trolleys in corridors all around the hospital. There are some in our peripheral hospitals as well. The problem has clearly been identified here. We do not have enough acute beds in the Mid West.”
The Medical Board pointed to continued severe overcrowding, excessive trolley numbers, delayed admissions, exhausted staff, and an emergency system operating without the acute capacity required to safely meet demand across the region.
The Board has called on Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to provide emergency funding, deal with patient safety risks, including the urgent recruitment of extra consultants, non-consultant hospital doctors, nurses, and other staff.
It wants the immediate establishment of a fully-empowered HSE Mid West Development Board, with local leadership and full authority to drive the delivery of the new hospital project.
And Limerick Labour TD Conor Sheehan has said that patient safety concerns at UHL must be urgently addressed.
“The statement from the chair of the Board is shocking but not surprising because despite the Minister’s announcement of a new hospital site at Raheen Business Park and the implementation of the recommendations of the HIQA review, the outstanding issues at UHL remain and nothing has essentially changed,” Deputy Sheehan said.
“Our hospital is under resourced from a staffing and a deficit of beds. While I welcome the Minister’s announcement of the new site, that was several weeks ago, we need now to see the immediate appointment of a project board to deliver the new hospital. The fact that we do not even know who will chair it is unacceptable.
“The appointment of a project board is urgently needed for the new hospital to progress and we need to see funding urgently allocated to appoint additional medical staff and in particular consultants to UHL.”
In a statement, the Department of Health said that the Government is working to address the challenges facing acute care in the midwest.
It said that, in December 2025, the Minister for Health, having considered the expert advice from HIQA, received Government support to progress with a blend of the proposed HIQA options necessary to respond to the challenges in the Mid West.
The Department said that the Minister remains focused on ensuring that the recommendations arising from HIQA’s assessment are implemented in a timely and coordinated manner, and that people in the midwest have access to safe, high‑quality, and reliable care.