Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The policy approach in respect of the surgical services for the Cavan-Monaghan hospital group was set out in 2004 in a report of the steering group established by the former North Eastern Health Board. That group was representative of all the stakeholders and included consultant representation from both hospital sites in surgery, medicine and radiology. The recommendations of the report were unanimously approved by the numbers of the group. The steering group recommended that major and emergency services should be carried out in Cavan General Hospital and that Monaghan General Hospital should provide selective elective surgery. The report's recommendations reflected what the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland stated. I know that people would like to think that these are political decisions, but that is not so.

In accordance with the recommendations of the steering group, a full surgical team based in Cavan would provide the services at Monaghan General Hospital in the form of selective elective surgery from Monday to Friday. Also in accordance with the steering group's recommendations, the hospital returned to 24 hour, seven day medical cover ten months ago, in January. A third consultant position has been in place since this time last year and five new anaesthetic non-consultant hospital doctors have been recruited to facilitate the return of the hospital to being on-call. These decisions were thought out, whether rightly or wrongly, in the interests of patients and were set out in the report last year.

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