Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)

Over the last month, Mullingar, Portiuncula and Galway University hospitals have been taken off call for ambulances due to the chaotic situation in accident and emergency departments. At the same time, Roscommon accident and emergency operates as a minor injury clinic for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I do not care what name is over the door of the emergency department, what goes on inside is what is important to me and the people I represent. The reopening of Roscommon is a simple and cost effective way to take pressure off the other accident and emergency departments and the overstretched ambulance service.

Within four weeks of the closure of the accident and emergency ward in Roscommon, the Department of Finance approved the roll-out of a new nationwide telestroke service, which allows the use of IT for specialists in regional centres to conduct video consultations and communicate with patients and staff. This is the sort of system hospital campaigners in Roscommon have always sought because of our unique geographical situation. Safety, however, was never the issue in Roscommon. Local GPs were told heart attack patients would be transferred directly to Galway University Hospital for access to the CAT lab. They now feel they have been lied to as patients are being transferred to Portiuncula hospital, a hospital with the same facilities as Roscommon; the only difference now is that in some instances patients are waiting in GPs' surgeries for up to an hour for the ambulance to arrive.

Even leaving these issues aside, at this point we have some of the most skilled staff in the country twiddling their thumbs while chaos reigns in other accident and emergency departments around the country. Where is the sense in that? There is a need to review the ambulance and hospital bypass protocols relating to Roscommon. Why does someone who needs two stitches who was picked up by an ambulance go past the front door of Roscommon Hospital on the way to an overcrowded accident and emergency department? Why have 300 children with minor injuries been forced, since the closure of the accident and emergency department, to travel in pain to other hospitals because staff in Roscommon have been instructed to turn them away even though Roscommon was well capable of treating them prior to July this year?

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