Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with my colleagues in much of what has been said. This was an announced a visit by HIQA and one must ask what it would have discovered if it had been unannounced. There should be follow-up unannounced visits. I have said before that I am very concerned about two groups, namely, the patients using the regional hospital in Dooradoyle and the staff working there, whose morale is on the floor. It is not helping that we are moving around the deckchairs in how the Limerick Regional Hospital Group is being managed. This adds to the uncertainty. A person said to me at the weekend that the only people who found the report shocking were those who had not been in the accident and emergency unit in Limerick for a long time. It is suffering the consequences of a flawed and failed reconfiguration programme that saw services in Nenagh, Ennis and St. John's hospitals being moved to an already crowded Limerick Regional Hospital, with no facilities being made available by the previous Administration. We are now living with the consequences and must fix the problem. We must fix it for our constituents who deserve better. Unfortunately, I have had cause to spend more than my fair share of time in the accident and emergency unit in Limerick Regional Hospital. It is not acceptable that in 2014 we must wait for a HIQA report for something to be done.

The new building is under construction. I refer to the comments of Deputy Joe Carey on capacity across the mid-western, western and southern regions as an interim measure to divert patients away from the area in their own interests. This has continued for too long. With his colleague, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Health has invested substantially in the hospital and its physical infrastructure. We now have a statutory agency, the one that stated services in Nenagh, Ennis and St. John's hospitals were unsafe, stating the hospital that was supposed to be the relief valve for these hospitals is unsafe. The people of the mid-western region deserve better.

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