Nurses at Temple Street Children’s Hospital are forced to arrive into work over an hour early every day – just to grab a parking space before their shift.

On Lunchtime Live this morning, Paediatric Consultant Dr Cathy Gibbons said there are around 30 staff parking spaces at the hospital and nurses are in a constant competition to get one every morning.

She was speaking after she was clamped outside the hospital for the third time after being called in to do an emergency critical retrieval and being left with nowhere to park.

In a tweet which has since gone viral, she said the situation “gets really, really tiring and expensive after a while – and people wonder why we find the job tough”.

On Lunchtime Live this morning, she said she paid the maximum three hours as she was rushing into the hospital to join the critical care retrieval team attending a patient outside of Dublin.

“I went into the hospital and my day then became a 12-hour day,” she said. “My focus was on my patients and not my car, so I just forgot to keep topping it up on the app every three hours.”

“I was heading back into Dublin on the ambulance at about 7:30 and I remember saying to my nurse, 100% I am going to be clamped when we get there.

“We packed up, tidied, tucked in everyone, did all the paperwork and I got out of work, nearly 9pm and there was the clamp on the car.

“There was almost a sense of resignation about it. I knew it was going to be there. So, it was €125 and 45 minutes sitting in my car just really, really wanting to be home and sadly, it is not the first time it has happened to me and many of my colleagues.”

Parking

She said nurses at the hospital face a constant struggle to get parking before their shift.

“The routine goes - any nurse in Temple Street will tell you this - that the night shift nurses, from about 6am onwards, take turns to go out and move their cars out on to the street – paid parking doesn’t kick in until 7am.

“The day shift nurses, often travelling from Portlaoise, Mullingar, Drogheda, drive into work for 6am or 6:15am to make sure they can get one of those precious spaces when it becomes available.

“Then they spend the next hour or an hour and a half before their shift starts sleeping, eating their porridge or listening to the radio so they can then have the privilege of going to start work for a 12-hour shift at 7:30am.

“This happens every day at Temple Street.”

Emergency

Dr Gibbons said there have been times where she was forced to abandon her car outside the hospital to rush in to care for a child.

She said medical staff need a return to the situation introduced during the first lockdown – which saw them offered free parking while working.

“There was that period in the first wave of COVID from March to September where the clamping threat was lifted and it was absolutely incredible,” she said.

“People were able to come into work on time for their shift and they were always able to find a space but that was rescinded as soon as the city opened up again and the Level Five restrictions were lifted.”

She said the system must be returned for medical staff responding to “super urgent situations”.

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