Four consultant pathologists have revealed that dead bodies have been left lying on trolleys at University Hospital Waterford, due to the lack of storage facilities at the mortuary.
The doctors issued a damning letter after bodies were stored on corridors with bodily fluids leaking on to the floors.
Reports say the mortuary lacks sufficient refrigeration, and the situation is so serious that some bodies simply decompose.
"Bodies decompose in the corridors, leading to closed-coffin funerals with relatives unable to view the remains as a result of gaseous decomposition. The trauma imposed on the bereaved is almost unspeakable", the letter claimed.
The Irish Patients Association (IPA) has said this is "a terrible testimony of how those deceased and their loved ones right to dignity in death have been violated."
"This is 2019 not 1950's"
IPA chairman Stephen McMahon said: "We are independent and non political, we have called on the Minister for Health and the Taoiseach that as a mark of respect to the family's of the deceased that they offer sincere apologies that such a situation has been allowed to develop.
"This is 2019 not [the] 1950's, it has happening our our collective watch.
"We have also asked the Minister for Health to investigate how this developed."
He also questioned whether the overspend at the National Children's Hospital is to blame.
“We have heard about the re-profiling of capital funds as a result of the overspend at the National Children’s Hospital development,” he said.
“This raises the question, was this development delayed because of that.”
Mortuary
Planning permission for a new mortuary has been approved - however there is no funding available.
Matt Shanahan is PRO for Health Equality for the south east.
He told Pat Kenny earlier: "Unfortunately, it's just another example of how even the passed-on are being overlooked here in the south east with respect to health funding.
"There has been, on the HSE national capital plan since 2014, approval for a new mortuary to be built at University Hospital Waterford... but no new facility has been provided.
"And unfortunately the system is working with facilities that have been there since 1993".
"The catchment down here has been growing all the while and the hospital caters to over 560,000 people in the region... It's all about the fact that this hospital has not been seeing the resourcing that it requires.
"We have come out very badly in terms of the hospital group structure - it is the most under-funded model four hospital in the country, and this is just systematic of what is happening on the ground down here".
"Health hazard"
"The whole thing is a heath hazard and the HSE acknowledged this themselves - that this was a significant health and safety hazard for their own staff and for the clinic staff working there.
"It's not news to HSE South - it might be news to HSE nationally, but this has been known for some time, and it has been known to people in the undertaking business in the region as well".
"You've got a huge capacity problem, it's as simple as that.
"We need new facilities down here within the mortuary, they haven't been provided and you're now seeing coming to light what people, I suppose, have been trying to manage for the last number of years".
