Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)

We have heard much about Roscommon, Sligo and Portlaoise, but I wish to talk about St. Mary's Orthopaedic Hospital which is in the heart of my constituency of Cork North-Central. I acknowledge the presence in the Chamber of the other three Deputies from the constituency, Deputies Dara Murphy and Billy Kelleher and the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch.

As many Deputies will not be too familiar with the orthopaedic hospital, I will put on record some points in regard to it. It is sited on the north side of Cork city, has one of the lowest infection rates of any hospital in this State, is located on 30 acres of land, more than half of which is green open space that can be developed, and has all the ancillary services one would expect of a local hospital. Despite all these positives, someone somewhere in the HSE came up with the bright idea that we should transfer the orthopaedic services from the hospital. As people can imagine, this proposal was met with bewilderment and outrage by the local community and, as a result, the proposal to transfer all orthopaedic services from the hospital was a very contentious election issue.

On 4 February of this year, the then Fine Gael candidate and now Fine Gael Deputy, Dara Murphy, issued a press release on the future of the orthopaedic hospital. In the statement he said Fine Gael would stop the transfer of orthopaedic services from St. Mary's hospital if it got into power the following month, that he had received a cast iron guarantee from the Fine Gael deputy leader and spokesperson on health, Deputy James Reilly, that the transfer would be stopped, that this was a commitment it would absolutely deliver on and that it was an absolute cast iron guarantee.

Naturally enough this statement raised a few eyebrows in the media in Cork so they went looking for Deputy Reilly to get his views. Subsequent quotes attributed to him in response to the press release issued by Deputy Murphy were as follows. He said he supported the call by the now Deputy Dara Murphy in regard to the retention of orthopaedic services at St. Mary's hospital and that the proposal to transfer services made no sense for four reasons. He said clinical outcomes would be better at St. Mary's owing to the low infection rate at the hospital, the move to the South Infirmary-Victoria Hospital would reduce the number of available beds from 125 to 80, which is a 36% reduction, that the South Infirmary-Victoria Hospital was on a cramped city centre site while St. Mary's had 30 acres of space on which to expand, and that instead of downsizing St. Mary's, child and family services, ambulance services and community health services should be there.

This statement begs the question about what has changed. When Deputy Reilly found himself in the position of Minister for Health, instead of standing over what he said before the election, he decided to change his mind and hold a review on the future of orthopaedic services at St. Mary's. This was despite everything he said only a few weeks previously about the proposal not making any sense whatsoever. The review was conducted by officials from the Department and we now know they reported back to the Minister in the past fortnight. The contents of the review have not been published so I can only guess as to what was contained in it. However, whatever it was, it must have been damning because the Minister has now done a complete U-turn and agreed to the transfer of orthopaedic services. As a result of this U-turn, I call on the Minister to publish in full the results of the review as well as all correspondence received by his Department in regard to the orthopaedic hospital while this review was being undertaken.

This is important not only because of the obvious U-turn but because the Minister stated in this House on 28 June in response to a question tabled by Deputy Kelleher that he consulted local representatives as part of the review. I am not sure who these representatives were but I can say who they were not. They were not the elected Members for the area nor were they representatives of the staff or the patients.

The Minister might think this issue has been put to bed with the decision he announced last week but the campaign to retain the orthopaedic services at St. Mary's hospital continues and is far from finished. In fact, this Friday, campaigners will hold another rally at the hospital. We will fight tooth and nail to force the Minister to stand by his pre-election commitments. That is all we want. We are not looking for the impossible. We are not asking the Minister to fly a rocket to the moon or rush a beach head during wartime. We are just asking him to stand by what he said a few short weeks ago. What he said does not make sense.

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