Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

Few issues are more sensitive, emotive or important than hospital reconfiguration. However, in an extremely difficult financial position where, as one commentator put it, Ireland is in the spotlight "24 seven", we must be measured and responsible even when expressing strong feelings. Comments beamed at the constituency may end up in the Financial Times or other international media as evidence of political instability or an inability to take measures required. "Loose lips sink ships" was said in Second World War Britain. Today, they can heighten nervousness on bond markets and, more importantly, the cost of borrowing.

South Tipperary General Hospital, in the words of the Health Service Executive, is a good, functioning hospital and is in itself a result of reconfiguration. It has received a great deal of investment and is only recently firing on all cylinders, so to speak. There is a determination in the community that it preserve its general hospital status and core services such as obstetrics, paediatrics and acute medicine. There are no resources for a major new regional hospital and, as we have heard already this evening from Deputy Howlin, the existing one in Waterford is fully stretched, to put it mildly.

The Tipperary Oireachtas Members met the HSE last week and the Government ones met the Minister, Deputy Mary Harney, today. A number of options are being considered, not just the one leaked last week, and they will not be finalised before clinical examinations at national level of different sectors are concluded in up to two years' time.

There will be regular meetings between the Oireachtas Members and the HSE, and we were told by the HSE last week that obstetrics would continue in South Tipperary General Hospital and in all the four south eastern hospitals-----

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