Tallaght Hospital has said it is treating seriously a complaint from a Dublin family, whose 79-year-old mother died yesterday after spending five days on a trolley in the hospital's accident and emergency (A&E) unit.
Mrs Rena Kennedy, from Firhouse, was admitted to the hospital last Tuesday and remained on a trolley in the A&E unit until Saturday evening. At that stage she was given a bed and within 24 hours had suffered a heart attack
Her son, Mr David Kennedy, said his mother was very weak by the time she got a bed. Criticising conditions in A&E, he said that at one stage a drunk was leaning over her bed and security had to be called to take the drunk away.
He told yesterday's Liveline programme on RTÉ Radio 1, it was a sad indictment on society that an elderly woman should be treated in such a way in her twilight years.
His mother, he said, was taken to the A&E unit because she was "unable to keep food down". She was put fasting so that she could have "a particular procedure", but it could not be carried out until she got a bed. As a result, she had to fast for a number of days.
A hospital spokeswoman extended condolences to the family and said the hospital had an established procedure for dealing with complaints. "This complaint will be dealt with seriously through that procedure," she said.
The hospital, which is under serious financial pressure, is one of the five main Dublin teaching hospitals which announced the closure earlier this month of 250 beds. Last week the hospital admitted that a room originally used to receive dead bodies was sometimes used to treat A&E patients.
Mr Conor Lenihan, a Fianna Fáil backbench TD for the Tallaght area, said there needed to be more resources pumped into A&E to ensure better treatment for patients.