A Baldoyle woman has described a recent 11-day stay in Beaumont as a “disaster.”
In recent weeks, the Northside People has run a number of articles detailing the sub-standard conditions in the local hospital, and local woman Carmel Flanagan has become the latest local resident to speak out about her mother’s experience.
“I felt the need to voice my anger,” she said.
In April, Flanagan was brought into the “red zone” of the hospital, which is for patients who are at the highest level of risk.
In September, however, Flanagan had a distinctly different experience.
This time, Flanagan was assessed and brought into the “orange zone” of the hospital, which meant she was left on a trolley “packed together like sardines”
Flanagan herself said, “I felt lucky that I had my two wonderful, caring daughters with me and could only imagine what it must be like for someone who was there on their own in the chaotic A&E.”
“As I lay on that trolley in my increasingly distressed state, I was also very aware of how distressed my daughters were. As I lay there, I never doubted for one moment that any member of staff cared about me. I knew everyone was doing what they could do to help until I was seen by the doctor.”
Flanagan eventually got to see a doctor, and said, “I don’t care what you do to me, put me anywhere, put me in a cupboard, just make what is happening to me stop.”
The doctor replied, “well, do care, because I saw how distressed you were on arriving at A&E, and this is not good enough.”
Flanagan said she was grateful to the “kind doctor” and “the wonderful staff in A&E and the paramedics,” but after her 11-day ordeal, she is now wondering where the blame lies.
“The blame certainly does not lie with the staff at all levels in A&E or the doctors who offer comfort and support; the blame lies in one place and one place only, and that is the government.”
Beaumont has become something of a millstone around the government’s neck in the last 20 years, and Flanagan said, “the government has let the situation deteriorate over the last 20 years or more, and I don’t know much lower it could go.”
“If it weren’t for the staff in A&E I feel we’d be on our own. It is only through pure dedication and caring that anyone could work in such a chaotic environment, which is unfit for purpose.”
Flanagan said she wanted to voice her anger about her Beaumont experience, not just for her, but “for my traumatised family, for the people who are reading this, for the people who may unfortunately need to attend there in the future, and for the dedicated staff who work so tirelessly to look after us all in what can only be described as a third world standards for both staff and patients.”
She said, “I could continue about my A&E experience, like my daughter being told to stand in my trolley space while I was being brought for an X-ray so I wouldn’t lose the space, but it has all been said before, and heard by our government – and ignored.”
She stated that “our government needs to act now before lives are lost due to the Beaumont A&E department being totally and utterly unfit for purpose.”
The Baldoyle resident said “our local community lives with fear and dread of having to attend Beaumont A&E either themselves or with family and loved ones and the government must act now.”
“Again, I want to thank the dedicated staff in A&E; it is thanks to them that I am continuing my healthcare journey with my kind and caring team of doctors.
Beaumont found itself in the headlines again this week, but not for its medical care – rather, it has found itself with another round of negative publicity due to an Oireachtas committee finding the hospital overspent by €3 million to overhaul payroll systems in the hospital.
The Board of Beaumont Hospital was brought before the Public Accounts Committee this week, and it was found that as a result of the process not going out to tender in 2020, it resulted in an overspend of almost €3 million.
Initially set at a cost of €1.9 million, the project spiralled to a cost of €4.3 million.
Committee member Eoghan Kenny said, “the matter would have been swept under the carpet had staff members in the hospital not made me aware of this massive overspend of taxpayers money.”
The Labour TD sai,d “there is a culture within hospitals of burying the details rather than being upfront with the people.”
“There appears to be a death of accountability and oversight within the board at Beaumont; the very fact that they did not flag this exorbitant overspend is an absolute disgrace,” he said.
“Is there more that we are unaware of? Politicians cannot ask questions if they are not provided with full and transparent information relating to the spending of taxpayers money. There are serious questions to be answered by the board of Beaumont on this, and potentially other matters.”
This week, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told the Dáil that Beaumont has reduced the number of people waiting on trolleys by 30% despite a nearly 6% increase in attendances.
She said, “one of my priorities is increasing capacity. That means more beds, more surgical hubs, which we are seeing, and more digital and virtual services.”
Last week’s Budget saw a total of €27.4 billion announced in healthcare funding for 2026, marking 20.7% of the government’s planned expenditure for 2026.
As the United Kingdom can attest, merely throwing money at the healthcare service and hoping it solves the outstanding issues in healthcare doesn’t work; local residents have spoken, in confidence, to Northside People that the staff in Beaumont are overworked, underpaid and are stretched thin due to governance issues.
2023 research from the Royal College Of Surgeons found that 442 Irish-qualified doctors applied for temporary work visas to Australia; statistics from 2021 found that 725 doctors graduated from Ireland’s education system.
Despite the government spending €1 billion more on healthcare than it was five years ago, the governance and systemic issues in Irish healthcare remain, and Beaumont is the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the state of Irish healthcare.