The Health Service Executive (HSE) has said it will allocate €5 million to the area of hospital-acquired infections and employ 52 new staff to tackle the problem "as soon as possible".
The commitment will include €2 million to fund a new publicity campaign to inform people of infections such as MRSA and the winter vomiting bug, as well as antibiotic use. The campaign is scheduled to begin in October.
Some 52 new staff will be employed to work in the area "as soon as possible", a HSE spokesman said. They will include infection-control nurses and pharmacists.
This follows a recently published report which found that a lack of funding for specialist staff and beds is to blame for the slow progress in tackling hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA.
The report, published by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre last month, assessed progress in implementing the Strategy for the Control of Antimicrobial Resistance in Ireland (SARI), which was launched by the Government in 2001. Its authors note that, at a national level, there was some progress last year, including the launch of national recommendations on hand hygiene and the control of MRSA, as well as the guidelines on antibiotic stewardship for hospitals.
There had also been "significant activity" in many regions and at local level, for instance in GP education on antibiotic prescribing and the introduction of new laboratory methods.
However, the report states that "the full implementation of SARI is some way off".
"This is due to inadequate resources, including a lack of ring-fenced funding for SARI initiatives and delays in the approval of whole-time equivalent staff," it states.
"In Ireland, there are inadequate numbers of consultant microbiologists, infection control nurses, antibiotic pharmacists, surveillance scientists and other staff, despite some appointments in recent years.
"Furthermore, high bed occupancy rates and insufficient numbers of isolation rooms impede the implementation of national guidelines such as in the control of MRSA in hospitals."
The failure to include ring-fenced funding in the estimates of the Department of Health and Children as part of the budget in December 2005 for SARI implementation this year was "a great disappointment to those involved nationally in providing leadership in this area, as well as the relevant individuals and groups on the ground, who have worked hard and enthusiastically to implement SARI in the face of inadequate resources," the authors note.
Given the public's concern about infections such as MRSA, and respite reassurances from the Department of Health and Children, the Minister for Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE), the report stated, "progress is too slow", with national levels of antimicrobial resistance remaining "unacceptably high".
"Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe without a national system for surveillance of healthcare-associated infections," it stated.
Such failures gave rise to "considerable frustration, and even cynicism" among healthcare workers on the ground about the priority given to the full implementation of the 2001 SARI recommendations.