Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

This afternoon the Health Service Executive informed 130 staff that they will no longer be employed in Monaghan General Hospital and are to be redeployed. The HSE has confirmed that the final removal of all acute medical services from this hospital will take place in late January or early February 2009. In other words, the HSE has confirmed the death sentence for Monaghan General Hospital. A hospital which has provided care to generations of people will be no more.

The Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, her Fianna Fáil colleagues in Government, the HSE and above all, the Fianna Fáil Oireachtas Members for Cavan-Monaghan should hang their heads in shame. They have betrayed the people and have allowed vital services to be taken away with grave consequences for the health and the very lives of the people of County Monaghan. This will be a devastating blow to the people of that county and will be a major reduction in overall hospital services in the entire north-east region. It is the culmination of years of attrition by the Government and the HSE during which time service after service was taken from the hospital. The HSE has stated that once a medical assessment unit opens in Cavan General Hospital in late November or early December, the transfer of acute medical services from Monaghan to Cavan will happen within two months.

There are currently 3,000 acute medical admissions to Monaghan General Hospital per annum. If the HSE plan goes ahead, by the beginning of February 2009 this service must be provided by Cavan General Hospital where not one single additional acute hospital bed will be provided. The plan outlined to staff today by the HSE makes no mention of the location of additional accident and emergency ambulance cover in Monaghan town, as promised by the HSE. In a letter to me of 3 September, the HSE lists measures that must be in place prior to the centralisation of acute inpatient services at Cavan General Hospital. These included an additional 24-hour emergency ambulance at a Monaghan ambulance station, an increase of one, or 50%, from two to three ambulances. When I learned from sources within the HSE that the promised extra ambulance service may not be located in Monaghan town the HSE failed to deny this and confirmed that other locations were being considered.

Our hospital is to be closed and we do not even have a guarantee that we will be provided with the ambulance service which the HSE stated was vital. The removal of services from Monaghan General Hospital has already caused the deaths of patients. I have no doubt that the closure of the hospital will lead to considerable inconvenience, totally unnecessary suffering and, in some cases, the avoidable deaths of patients.

On the floor of this Chamber today I accuse the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Brendan Smith, the Fianna Fáil Deputies, Rory O'Hanlon and Margaret Conlon, and Senators Diarmuid Wilson and Francis O'Brien of betraying the people of counties Monaghan and Cavan whom they were elected to represent. Thanks to these Fianna Fáil time servers who failed to confront their Government on a life and death issue, health care in County Monaghan is to be devastated while Cavan General Hospital will be forced to cope with a considerable additional workload of patients without the additional resources required.

However late in the day it may be, I call on these people and on all others with positions of influence, to contact the Taoiseach, Deputy Cowen, the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, the HSE and the local Fianna Fáil Oireachtas Members and local authority representatives, not only in counties Cavan and Monaghan but throughout the region in a last minute 11th hour appeal. It is not too late to get a conscience about this issue.

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