Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister talks about creating extra resources within the health service but the small hospital framework document states that Our Lady's Hospital will lose accident and emergency, intensive care and coronary care services, as well as 24-hour anaesthesia. How is that increasing the resources within the hospital? I love this; this is rule by euphemism. We have a situation where redesign effectively means the downgrading of a level 3 hospital to a level 2 hospital. That is at a time when 94,764 people spent time on hospital trolleys last year in this State. Such is the pressure in Navan it is forced to open escalation wards that the Minister of State's Government will not even fund currently.

The Minister of State might be able to answer this question. I understand that the Minister, Deputy Harris, met the Ireland East Hospital Group very shortly after the budget. That group asked him if they could close the accident and emergency department in Navan. The Minister stated that it could close the accident and emergency department in Navan if it convinced the people of Meath that it was a good idea. I understand the Ireland East Hospital Group is working to try to convince local doctors that it is a good idea but how can it be a good idea? We only have to look at what happened in Cavan and Drogheda hospitals when Monaghan and Dundalk hospitals were closed.

Both of those hospitals were hammered with some of the highest waiting lists the country has ever seen. The contradiction in all of this is that, in 2015, the then Minister for Health visited Navan to open up the shiny new accident and emergency department. That Minster for Health was our current Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar. There has been no change in the ability of Navan hospital to provide decent health care services. If it was good enough for Deputy Varadkar in 2015, should it not be good enough for the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Finian McGrath, and the current Minister of Health, Deputy Harris, that this service remains open and safe into the future?

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