Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I will always try to do so. As someone who was born in the hospital, I am not ashamed to say the umbilical cord has never been cut. I am as attached to the hospital as everyone else in my community. We will always struggle to reinstate a level of service that will lift the dark cloud from over the lives of our communities. The reality in our community is that infants have been lost during childbirth and women have been lost in the middle of cardiac arrest. It is sad that such a reality will be replicated because the Government intends to implement the Hanly report, using the Monaghan formula as a template, in hospital sites throughout the jurisdiction. As a Deputy said, when the history of this affair is written, it will prove to have been the saddest and darkest time in the history of the State's health care provision.

In my experience, the CEOs have sought to ride roughshod over the 30 member composition of their respective health boards. They will now be left to work on various projects, they are in place either to perform or progress without any accountability and pursue whatever agenda they wish. Nothing in the Bill or its explanatory memorandum states all of this will end on 31 December 2004.

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