The Ireland East Hospital Group and our hospitals regret that industrial action by SIPTU, currently underway, is affecting patient and client services. Industrial action involving a significant number of our staff who make an essential contribution to the effective running of our health services every day is taking place at the following IEHG Hospitals:

• Mater Misericordiae University Hospital

• Our Lady’s Hospital Navan

• Regional Hospital Mullingar

• St Vincent’s University Hospital

• St Luke’s General Hospital Carlow/Kilkenny

• Wexford General Hospital

Feedback from our services this morning would suggest that the situation in all sites is challenging because of the range of essential services affected. However, all sites are continuing to engage locally with SIPTU on contingency plans to ensure safe service provision and ensure patient dignity, care and comfort. In this regard we wish to acknowledge the goodwill and cooperation of our staff.

As well as facing challenges in maintaining essential daily care for our inpatients such as nutrition, hydration, transfer of patients, cleaning and infection control, there has also been a significant number of  appointment and procedure cancellations including surgical procedures, scope procedures, and outpatient appointments.

It is important to emphasise that while many of our Emergency Departments are busy this morning and patients attending may experience delays, all Emergency Departments are open and patients requiring urgent and emergency care should attend.

However, we are asking people to think about all their care and treatment options, the length of time you may be waiting in ED should you not require urgent care and we would ask that people keep our ED services for the patients who need them most.  For example, many patients with limb injuries can go to an Injury unit and others with a less serious illness can be treated by their GP or referred by their GP to an Assessment Unit the following day.

The services impacted vary across our Hospital Group sites and patients have been contacted by their local hospital in the event that their scheduled procedure is affected by the dispute.

We will keep the public informed of any developments that may affect patient services through the national and local media, our social media channels (@IEHospitalGroup and www.facebook.com/IrelandEastHospitalGroup) and our website www.iehg.ie

ENDS