Letterkenny: A new state-of-the-art maternity unit at Letterkenny General Hospital, which was completed two and a half years ago, is being used to accommodate secretarial staff while women continue to give birth in cramped, unsuitable facilities at the hospital, it has been confirmed.
Difficulty in recruiting midwives has resulted in the facility, which comprises four delivery suites, an obstetrics theatre and a recovery unit, being used as office accommodation.
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) pointed out that the four delivery suites, nurses' station and what will in time be a coffee room for staff were being used as office space for secretarial staff.
The new maternity theatre was opened on a temporary basis earlier this year while refurbishment work was being carried out in the general theatres but it is now closed.
The Health Service Executive (North West) said that as well as an ongoing recruitment drive at home and in Britain, it had also attempted to recruit midwives in India.
It has been estimated that the equivalent of 10.4 full-time midwives would be needed to get the unit open.
Many of the 65 midwives currently employed at the hospital have flexible working arrangements with some doing as little as one shift per week.
The new unit would require additional staff because women will be accommodated in individual delivery suites whereas currently women in labour are looked after in four-bed wards with curtains dividing the beds.
Therese Gallagher, a midwife in the hospital and the INO's Letterkenny representative, described the situation as "sickening".
"You walk past all these desks in what should be a maternity unit and into a congested ward where we are all falling over each other," she said.
This hindered efforts to make the experience a natural and happy one for mothers, she said.
The INO says it accepts that the hospital's director of nursing has been on a recruitment drive for some months now.
"We understand that five midwives are in the process of being recruited but with three due to leave in September and others about to go on maternity leave, they will be immediately swallowed up," said Ms Gallagher.
Noel Treanor, the INO's industrial officer in the north west, said he accepted the hospital's bona fides on this.
He said that the demands of the job meant that midwives were opting for more regular working hours in, for example, the public health area.
"The situation in Letterkenny is very frustrating for our members and I can only imagine how disconcerting it is for a woman in labour to be only a few feet away and separated by a curtain from another woman," he said.
The Department of Health allocated funding to enable the unit to be commissioned late last year and it had been anticipated that it would open in May.
The HSE has said that the shortage of midwives was an issue nationwide and that there were very few countries whose midwifery qualification was recognised by An Bord Altranais.
Nora Newell of the Women's Centre in Letterkenny said some women were opting to have their babies in Derry because of conditions in Letterkenny.
