Nurse's heartbreaking message about trolley crisis as she says pensioners 'who built up the State' are being denied hospital beds

A nurse on the frontline of Ireland’s trolley crisis has said it’s unforgivable that pensioners who built the country are being denied hospital beds.

Jean O’Connell, a nurse at Cork University Hospital where 43 admitted patients were without a bed today, hit out at the government for failing to tackle the ongoing crisis, saying the current situation is “unacceptable” and that it would “shame you” as an Irish citizen.

She said: “I think as a society we just have to say stop. The Government have to do more. It’s just unacceptable.”

O’Connell added that the conditions were particularly harrowing for older patients, saying they had “very little dignity” when being treated on chairs and trolleys.

She said: “These [people] are the generation that built up the State that worked and paid 60 percent tax and didn’t have spa breaks and Netflix and other things that made life a little bit easier.

“They worked hard and put their efforts into getting their family educated and now at the end of their life they are sitting in hard chairs and trolleys with not enough staff to look after them.”

Speaking to Cork’s 96fm, Ms O’Connnell also said that hospital overcrowding has had a serious negative psychological effect on nurses working in such challenging conditions.

“You have only one pair of hands and legs and you can only do one thing at a time and you’re constantly being pulled in every direction and that takes its toll on people.

“No matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you do your best, it’s not enough.”

Fellow nurse Michelle Kingston said that she has come home from shifts crying because she felt she hasn’t done enough to help patients and likened the hospital situation in Ireland to that of a third world country.

“We’re always apologising” she said.

“Because as nurses we blame ourselves.”

The Irish Nursing and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said on Tuesday that it had written to Health Minister Simon Harris and urged him to declare a major incident at the worst-affected hospitals.

Last year was the worst year on record for hospital overcrowding according to INMO figures with 118,367 patients left waiting for a bed throughout the year.