David Maxwell (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I thank the witnesses for attending. I am a Border TD and live in Monaghan. Like my colleague Senator Blaney, I was shocked when the witnesses said how poor the services were in Northern Ireland. I know that from having family living there. I believe that the Executive gets one of the top rounds of funding for health services in the UK from the UK Government. I could be challenged on that.

We talk about political will and coming together on both sides of the Border. For the past 15 years, I have been listening to talk about the closure of the accident and emergency units in the South. The unit was closed in Monaghan General Hospital. Sinn Féin is constantly harping on about how it should be opened. The Taoiseach was the then Minister for health. He was blamed in the last number of weeks for being the cause of the closure of the accident and emergency unit in Monaghan hospital. It then came down through James O'Reilly right up to the current Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, who is somehow being blamed about the services.

It maddens me, ad is probably the reason we do not have that cross-Border collaboration, that Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland took the exact same logical look at the reports that were done from the year 2000 that said Northern Ireland had too many accident and emergency units. I think six or seven were downgraded to minor injury units. Sinn Féin did it in the North but it still says that we should not have done it here.

Nobody in Monaghan, Armagh or Tyrone is going to complain if they can get a better outcome whether it is in terms of CAT scans, MRIs, cancer, strokes or any disease. If a family member gets sick, we want the best treatment and will travel to get it. We have a cluster of four hospitals where I am. We have Monaghan and Cavan, which work as a one-unit hospital. Cavan is the more senior and has the accident and emergency unit. Monaghan is doing the day cases and has a minor injuries unit. Just across the Border we have Enniskillen, which is closer to Cavan, and we have Craigavon, which is closer to Monaghan. My fear is that with all of this better collaboration, services will be taken from Monaghan to Craigavon because it is a teaching hospital - it has all the bells and whistles - or Cavan could lose out to Enniskillen. I believe that not all of the theatres are up and running in the hospital in Enniskillen at the minute even though they could be.

It is great wishing for all this cross-Border collaboration and everything to work, but when you are living on the Border, the fear is that you are going to lose services in your area. Logically and in the best interests and outcomes for patients, that is what is needed, but it will be a hard sell on the ground. It was bad enough losing our services from one county to the other in our constituency. It was the same for Dungannon when it lost its accident and emergency unit to Enniskillen back in the day. However, if we are going to start losing them across the Border or vice-versa - if services come from the North into the South - that will be a big hurdle for politicians to sell to the people. It is all rosy talking about it but when it comes to putting it on the ground, we know how people will turn and say that idea is not for them.