Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

In recent times serious concern has been expressed by the local community and staff members about aspects of the service provided by Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown. There have been consistent cutbacks in funding to the hospital in recent years as there have been to other hospitals. There have been suggestions that one emergency department of the three in the north Dublin area would be closed and that the hospital at Blanchardstown could be the casualty or at least that its emergency service could be reduced to a 12-hour 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. service. This would have drastic consequences for residents of catchment areas. Some 35,000 attendances are recorded at the emergency department annually. Trauma services are in great need in this hospital, which serves a very large catchment area and there is already great pressure on the other major hospitals in north Dublin, Beaumont and the Mater. If the emergency department were scaled down, it would have a major impact on the community in the catchment area. It would seriously inconvenience many people who would not have their own transport to travel long distances in the event that they were travelling there themselves. It would also have a serious impact on the availability of junior doctors coming there to work who would then not get the experience and training they need. We need an absolute assurance that the emergency departments in all three north Dublin hospitals are maintained on a 24-hour basis.

There is a second issue of great concern. Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown recruited its own junior doctors and was very successful in doing so. Many young doctors were eager to go to Blanchardstown to get training and experience. Now the HSE has intervened to stop this and proposes to recruit centrally and then dispatch people to different hospitals.

I am told that between 50 and 60 junior doctors are needed for a number of hospitals and that the HSE is going to far-flung corners of the world to recruit. This will be extremely cumbersome for Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown. There are fears it will make it far more difficult for the hospital to recruit the necessary staff, bearing in mind the linking of recruitment systems generally in many areas. We need the Minister to ensure hospitals will have the right to recruit locally. Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown was doing so successfully. Why fix something that is not broken? The funding cuts are causing big problems for the community that needs the health service and also for health service staff who are under great pressure. The flexibility afforded to hospitals such as that in Blanchardstown to recruit directly their own complement of junior doctors is absolutely necessary.

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