James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for affording me time to raise this important matter which impacts on the health of the entire midlands region and in particular, Longford-Westmeath.

Due to extreme public disquiet in the midlands, will the Minister for Health and Children give me a guarantee that services at the Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar, County Westmeath, will be maintained, as further erosion of essential medical facilities following on the recent off-call status of the accident and emergency department at the hospital, would be untenable? There is a real fear that the Longford-Westmeath hospital is being closed by stealth. While I am not used to getting honest answers on the long-term plans of the HSE, I must stress a deliberate and cold-hearted campaign of axing services to the detriment of the health of the people of the midlands will not be tolerated and questions must be answered.

We have heard of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. What we are seeing is a health system attempting to make good the fiddling of the books while patients die. While it may not be politically correct to raise such a sensitive matter, people are dying who would be alive and with their families if they had the benefit of a competent and well-run Department of Health and Children.

Given the ongoing destruction of the health infrastructure in Longford-Westmeath and the lack of backup care given to the ill, the terminally ill, the elderly patients and those requiring emergency treatment, the people of the region are not prepared to see a further erosion of health provision. They have been totally abandoned by the Government, in particular the Government Deputies Mary O'Rourke and Peter Kelly who are supposed to represent their interests.

The Longford-Westmeath hospital is struggling to maintain its services. Unless the 41 acute beds that the HSE has axed are re-opened, this hospital will be the latest casualty of HSE mismanagement and of the scandalous disregard of this Government for the health and well-being of the midlands.

When announcing the back-on-call status of the hospital on 4 December, the HSE claimed it was giving no guarantee that Mullingar hospital will not be off-call again. This is unacceptable. During my meeting with the hospital manager and a representative of the HSE to discuss the off-call situation then, I also raised the urgent matter of the re-opening of the acute inpatient beds. I was informed that the utilisation of these beds is dependent on the employment of an extra 28 medical personnel who are urgently needed to replace the recent loss of 30 staff at the hospital.

This is very much a catch-22 situation. The Minister has removed the staff from the hospital and has, therefore, by extension removed the available beds that patients so urgently need. I am extremely angry at the cold-blooded approach of the HSE to what should be a patient-driven, patient-friendly health sector. Under the Minister's watch, patients are the last ones to matter in the system. By taking beds out of the system, patients are being put at dangerous risk. Patients are not numbers, they are real live people who bleed when cut and die when left on trolleys without treatment.

There is no excuse for the HSE's despicable failure to provide essential health care for the midlands. Following the closure of Longford hospital in 1986, the people of Longford were guaranteed 24 hour, seven day a week emergency cover. Left without a hospital of its own, County Longford was conned by the Minister for Health and Children and the promise of services at the Longford-Westmeath hospital. These cutbacks are dirty tricks which are undermining people's confidence in the level of care available at Longford-Westmeath hospital. We want guarantees that Mullingar hospital, which despite the cutbacks, is one of the top performing hospitals in the country with an excellent staff working hard on behalf of the people who attend there will be fully funded, with all outstanding works in relation to Phase 2B completed and acute beds restored. We do not want or believe spin. We want action and we want it immediately.

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