Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this vital motion on the health service. Once again, people living in the Cavan-Monaghan region are the victims of bed shortages in the main Dublin hospitals. In one case a patient has been waiting in Monaghan General Hospital since before Christmas to have urgent, life-saving heart surgery. If it were not for the high care unit in the hospital, which the Health Service Executive wants to close, I have no doubt the man in question would not be alive today. He was ready to travel yesterday morning but it transpired that a bed was not available. This morning he was given special medication to prepare him for the operation but, again, a bed was not available. Others are clearly being given priority.

It is unacceptable to right-thinking people that a state-of-the-art theatre in Monaghan General Hospital is lying idle when more than 40,000 elective operations have been cancelled in the past two and half years. Only this week, I received a six-page report detailing the trauma a man from County Monaghan experienced in a private hospital on the outskirts of Mullingar. Although its services are covered by the VHI and the Government's National Treatment Purchase Fund, it has not been inspected or subject to the same type of reports or inquiries as Monaghan General Hospital or other hospitals in the north east. The private hospital answered in writing the litany of complaints received without any denial, accepting that the complaints were justified. Surely, the first thing the Health Service Executive should do is fully to utilise the equipment, facilities and personnel it has in place in its own units before throwing away money to services that are unacceptable. I know the Minister got that six-page letter.

For the past ten years, it has been clearly accepted that we have a shortage of consultants, specialists and general practitioners. It is nothing short of a joke, however, to see the present Government and especially the Minister for Health and Children, becoming so active in an effort to solve, or be seen to solve, all these problems weeks before an election.

Patients who desperately need physiotherapy cannot obtain such services in the south Monaghan region because none is available in Drogheda. However, none of the physiotherapists who finished their final examinations last year got employment in the HSE.

People in the north-east will not forget that the Minister and her Fianna Fáil colleagues have failed to deliver the services they guaranteed five years ago. They knew in their hearts that they had no intention of getting involved. I was glad to hear the Minister is going to Wexford this week. We would be glad to see her coming up to Monaghan also. I know it is a long journey of 80 miles but it would be worthwhile.

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