Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown is a vital acute facility for 333,000 people from Meath to west Dublin and Kildare to north-west Dublin. Recently the HSE demanded a costing on what it would save the hospital to go from a 24-hour accident and emergency service to a 12-hour service. The Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, stated at the hospital on Monday there was no such plan. We accept that for now and will park it.

Today, however, there was devastating news. Staff in the hospital received a memo stating that 12 of 31 beds in the acute Laurel ward are closed with immediate effect and a surgical day ward with 24 beds will shortly be closed for two weeks and will return with only 8 of the 24 beds. This means that 30 to 40 day procedures will now be reduced to ten or 13. This is devastating news for the staff, the patients and especially for those suffering on waiting lists, and it arises from the most draconian cuts. In 2009 the hospital had a budget of €104 million; this year that budget is €84 million, a devastating 20% cut. The HSE acknowledges this is one of the best and most efficient hospitals in the country. In what is termed "activity" it has returned 4% over target and is supremely successful, but now it is being hammered into the ground with enormous consequences for the sick and suffering who languish for longer periods on waiting lists. Is the Tánaiste serious in standing over the devastation of this facility - named after a great socialist, James Connolly - and others throughout the country when, as indicated in a reply to a parliamentary question tabled last week, €17 billion in interest payments alone is to be paid to bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank during the next 20 years? That amount is in addition to the €30 billion for the bailout. Is that not absolutely breathtaking? Will the Tánaiste demand the immediate reversal of these cuts to the funding for this critical hospital facility?

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