Protestors block Varadkar's car at Limerick hospital
Protestors were removed by Gardaí after they blocked the Minister for Health's car as he arrived at University Hospital Limerick to open a new €40m critical care block today.
As 17 people lay waiting on trolleys inside the hospital's Emergency Department, protestors organised by the Anti Austerity Alliance, told Leo Varadkar that the Government had left the accident and emergency department like a "crime scene".
A new ED block has been constructed but is lying idle next to the current accident and emergency unit as it has yet to be piped for electricity before machines can be fitted and the unit staffed.
Mr Varadkar admitted the new ED -- earmarked to be open by the end of 2016 -- was "not fit for purpose" and was "affecting patient care".
He said the unit could not be fast tracked, but that money was not the problem.
"I'm told we can't (fast track)," he said.
"I'm told there are particular issues around the electrical works and if they're rushed, potentially it could cut off the electricity to the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) and the CCU (Critical Care Unit) which obviously would be catastrophic.
"So, I don't think (electricity) is the kind of thing you can take short cuts about. It is certainly not an issue about money. The capital finance is in place for the new emergency department and it will opened as soon as it can be done."
Mr Varadkar didn't seem phased and took to his mobile phone, despite a heavy Garda presence and protestors standing in front of his Garda-driven black ministerial Audi.
One of those protesting, Amanda Keane, 32, recalled how one elderly stroke patient was left on a trolley at the hospital for three days before getting a bed.
The mother-of-two from Janesboro, Limerick, explained: "There was one woman in particular, who's 84 years of age. She had suffered a stroke.
"She was three nights waiting on a trolley in a corridor. Last Friday night there was 46 people on trolleys in that hospital.
"This is 2015, but we have actually gone 20 years backwards, we're not gone forward."
"We want to see the wards that have closed reopened. There are new wards that haven't opened and they haven't got them staffed.
"It's time to lift the (nurses recruitment) embargo, bring in nurses and doctors and open wards and get the beds up and running. There's too many chiefs and not enough Indians."
Officially opening the new €40m Critical Care Block (CCB), Mr Varadkar noted it was, "not funded by Government money, but by taxpayers' money".
The new CCB includes a 12-bed intensive care unit, 16-bed high dependency unit, 16-bed acute cardiac care unit, a step down cardiac facility and a day cardiology unit.
Two remaining floors in the building will house a new Dialysis Unit and the new Emergency Department, which will open in late 2016.
