Denis Naughten (Longford-Roscommon, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. Over the past ten years we have seen significant spending on our health service, yet last year the then Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, handed back €300 million to the Department of Finance because she could not spend the money. That money could have been used to provide additional home-help hours, operations, medical cards or orthodontic treatment.

The €300 million, on a per capita basis in my own constituency, would have had a serious impact on problems we have to deal with every day. It would have provided an extra 4,300 families with a medical card, an extra 400 inpatient elective surgeries in local hospitals and an extra 76,000 home-help hours could have been provided in every parish in the Longford-Roscommon or Sligo-Leitrim constituencies. Some 400 additional children could have been called for orthodontic treatment rather than being bullied in school because they have low self-esteem and cannot get access to treatment.

Last week the Taoiseach stated that operations were not being cancelled; they were being postponed. There were 8,300 operations cancelled in the past two and a half years in the west. It is a serious symptom of what is happening in the health service, where it is failing to deliver for patients. We need significant investment in step-down facilities and urgent care centres which would provide extra beds and take pressure off accident and emergency services.

On emergency services, a decision was taken in the dying days of the last millennium to locate a ambulance base in west Roscommon, the single biggest blackspot in ambulance services in the west. For some reason that base was moved from west Roscommon to Knock, County Mayo. Tenders are being sought for that ambulance base. I plead with the Minister at this late stage to postpone that decision and re-evaluate the location of that ambulance base. When I questioned the Minister in the House on a number of occasions about the timetable for the delivery of the ambulance base to west Roscommon, she always responded on the development of the service in west Roscommon, not east Mayo, but for political reasons it was diverted to Knock, County Mayo which happens to be the home town of one of the Members on the far side of the House. That is disgraceful. Last summer when the Government spoke of taking the surgery services out of the county hospital in Roscommon, the Health Service Executive stated it would evaluate relocating that proposed ambulance base to west Roscommon. When it suited them they could move it to west Roscommon and when it did not they could move it to Knock.

There has been a stay of execution in the closure of the surgery services in the county hospital in Roscommon. The Health Service Executive is still not prepared to give clarity on where the surgeons will be based in the new reconfigured hospital service between Roscommon hospital and Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe. If the surgeons are based in Portiuncula Hospital, that is where the surgery will take place and, in effect, the surgery services will be closed in Roscommon. It will be the same as what happened in Monaghan Hospital. That is what is being planned. The decision is being postponed until after the general election. If the services are based in Ballinasloe, that is where the surgery will be carried out and that involves the effective closure of the county hospital in Roscommon. The threat looming over the people of Roscommon is that if they do not agree to this, the HSE will not appoint the third consultant physician on a permanent basis. We are seeing smoke and mirrors used on this issue. There is a lack of clarity from the Government, which wants to postpone its inevitable plan under the Hanly report to close small effective hospitals like the county hospital in Roscommon.

The hospice service is also affected. There has been a state-of-the-art hospice bed in Boyle in County Roscommon for the past number of years. The nurses have been appointed to run that service, and yet that bed has not been in use due to industrial relations difficulties. Anyone who saw the television programme about St. Francis's Hospice in Raheny during the week would understand the importance of providing such a base in the community of north Roscommon, and yet due to industrial relations problems that bed still remains closed.

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