14th April 2000

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Tallaght Hospital failing to live up to potential

Dublin South West Councillor Seán Crowe has reacted angrily to reports that sick people at Tallaght Hospital are being left for up to four days on trolleys without even basic facilities and the wait for A and E treatment can be up to eight hours.

Councillor Seán Crowe, who campaigned for years for a state of the art hospital in Tallaght, blamed consecutive Ministers' for Health for the current situation.

Councillor Crowe said:

``The situation at Tallaght Hospital is a disgrace. This so-called flagship, state of the art hospital is failing to live up to its potential because it has been starved of cash from day one. While there is a chronic shortage of facilities throughout the entire health service, there are top facilities lying idle at Tallaght. One example of this is a physiotherapy pool that is being used as storage space. The morale of staff at Tallaght is now at an all time low because they feel helpless to do anything about the situation.

``Consecutive Ministers for Health must take the blame for the current crisis in the Health Service. The crisis has been getting steadily worse over many years and without the provision of more hospital places and a completely new look at how health service staff are treated, it is going to get even worse.

ENDS

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