Tony McLoughlin (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State's response does not address my concerns. There is a clear case for Sligo University Hospital having the required population for the service to be viable, and it makes sense in terms of geography, medical need and finances. Over a ten-year period, there would be a net saving of €3.6 million if the service were introduced. I have the facts and statistics to back that up.

When one looks at the map of this country to see the areas that are covered - the Minister of State mentioned about Altnagelvin in Derry - some of the patients, certainly, in south Donegal, are coming to Sligo but north Donegal is covered by the Derry service. Then the service is in accordance with a line from Dublin to Galway, and from that down to Limerick, into Tralee, Cork and Waterford. These are the areas. This is the map that I am subjected to on a weekly basis. There is no service north of a line from Dublin to Galway where there is a population of 245,000. That is not acceptable in this day and age.

The last letter I received from Ms Ann Cosgrove on my correspondence on the cath lab in Sligo University Hospital states that she has recently become involved in this project and outlines that there is further work to be completed by HSE procurement in advance of going to tender for this project. Ms Cosgrove wrote that she could not give me an exact date as to when it will go to tender other than to say that it will be the last quarter of 2016 at the earliest. We are now into the first quarter of 2017 and this is the information that I am getting.

I am not happy and I am not accepting the information that I have got here. With all due respects to the Minister of State, when one looks at the facts and sees what I have in front of me and what I am being subjected to on a regular basis from constituents in my area who must travel on a daily basis to Galway not knowing whether or not they will make it in the back of an ambulance if they do not get the helicopter, it is high time. We have seen in other areas of the country where promises have been made in relation to cath labs, second cath labs and various other services in the past couple of weeks. It is not acceptable at this stage that we, in the north west, have had to be subjected to that.

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