Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney said she was expecting a huge improvement in the cleanliness of hospitals in the next round of the national hygiene audit that begins next month.
The Minister was speaking at the Irish Patients' Association's (IPA) Clean Hospital Summit in Dublin today.
The conference is bringing together 250 healthcare professionals from across the public hospital system to share their expertise. Chief executives, microbiologists, clinical nurses, cleaners and other auxiliary staff are taking part in the summit, along with a number of speakers from different disciplines.
Ms Harney said there was "no excuse" for hospitals failing to reach the "good" category in the inspections, a target missed by 91 per cent of the country's acute facilities in the last report in October.
Around €20 million had been set aside to implement recommendations of the first audit, she said. The Minister urged health service personnel to examine factors such as stricter family visiting hours in a bid to implement health and hygiene practices in hospitals.
"The hygiene audit was the first that provided the baseline data, and we'll now be able to measure against that," she said. "There's no excuse in 2006 for not reaching what's called the good standard. It's not rocket science, it's very simple - and although it's not always simple to put into effect, it's soluble and I expect to see a huge improvement next time, " she said.
Ms Harney told delegates at the one-day conference that it was the responsibility of all healthcare staff to work together to achieve high hygiene standards .
Ms Harney told the conference she had seen a patient's relative bringing a burger and chips into a ward late in the evening.
"We must constantly strive to do better and constantly strive to live up to best practice," she added.
Opening the summit, IPA chairman Stephen McMahon said Ireland had one of the highest rates of hospital superbug MRSA in Europe. He described the failure of more than 90 per cent of Ireland's hospitals not to meet cleanliness standards as shocking, unnecessary and unacceptable.
"Cleaning up our hospitals is do-able, others have done so," he said. "It saves patients' lives, protects them from injury and allows scarce resources for others that really need them."
Mary Hynes, assistant director of the National Hospitals Office, said the next hospital inspections would begin in February and there would be further audits done by the Health Service Accreditation Board once national standards of hygiene were put into place.
PA