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17 Dec 2025
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17 Dec 2025
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St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny
The number of patients waiting on a bed in St Luke's Hospital in January 2022 was up 73% compared to January 2021, according to figures from the INMO.
The INMO figure for this January was 334 compared to 193 in January 2021. It is lower than in the years prior when for January 2020 there were 335 patients recorded, and in 2019 there were 369. The highest figure on record for January here came in 2018, when there were 615 patients waiting on a bed.
Publishing their first monthly TrolleyWatch report of 2022, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has said that chronic overcrowding cannot be allowed to become the norm once again in hospitals. Nationally, 8,636 patients were on trolleys in the month of January, 132% higher than January 2021 (3,715).
“We cannot allow a return to pre-2020 business as usual in our hospitals where chronic overcrowding is allowed to continue," said an INMO statement.
“It is only the first month of the year and we had overcrowding records broken in our hospitals, with University Hospital Limerick logging record overcrowding two days in a row last week. We have seen the highest levels of January overcrowding since the INMO began Trolleywatch in 2006 in University Hospital Limerick, Letterkenny University Hospital, Mercy University Hospital, Portunicula Hospital, Sligo University Hospital, University Hospital Galway.
“It is not acceptable to us that chronic overcrowding is allowed to continue while COVID is still rampant in many of our hospitals. Our members are frankly embarrassed and tired of apologising to patients for the poor standard of care environments.
“The HSE must take steps to ensure that this chronic overcrowding isn’t allowed to continue into February, March and beyond. The HSE should once again issue guidance to all hospitals on curtailing non urgent elective procedures until the end of February.
“Bespoke plans should be produced for hospitals where chronic overcrowding is a persistent feature of the hospital environment.”
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