Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The closure of the medical assessment unit at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda is a regular occurrence. It is common practice. It happened last week and the unit could very well be closed right now, as I speak. Perhaps the Minister can understand this but I cannot. The unit was opened to alleviate pressure on the very busy emergency department in the hospital. The HSE says that the hospital is very busy so it closes the medical assessment unit and sends patients back into the emergency department. One could not make it up.

Last Tuesday there were 217 patients in the emergency department in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. This was an unprecedented number but the medical assessment unit was closed. I contacted the HSE by e-mail on the Monday before last. My email was very straightforward - I asked the HSE to confirm that the medical assessment unit had been closed and to give me a reassurance that it would reopen on the following day. I got no response. I emailed the HSE again on Tuesday and Wednesday but got no response. I emailed again on Thursday but, to date, nobody has bother his or her backside to respond. That is a very serious issue and raises a number of questions. First, it raises the question of a lack of accountability within the HSE. It also raises the question of mismanagement in the context of the closure of a medical assessment unit which was opened in the first instance to alleviate pressure on the emergency department. The fact that the HSE did not respond to my emails leads me to believe that it did not want the public to know what is going on in the hospital.

First, there is the issue of the medical assessment unit. Second, there is the fact that the HSE did not respond to an elected representative on four different occasions. HSE senior managers seem to believe that they are answerable to nobody and are a law unto themselves. I ask the Minister to give his opinion on that. Will the Minister be holding them to account? I want to find out who made the decision not to respond to four separate emails on a matter of great concern to patients at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. I also want to know why the medical assessment unit was closed given that the reason it was opened in the first place was to alleviate the pressure on the emergency department. Why is it that droves of patients are now being sent back to the emergency department?

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