Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State's commitment that he will ask the national women and infants health programme to engage with Saolta. We have met Saolta and the management of Letterkenny University Hospital. We have raised the matter with the Minister. We want to escalate this issue because we want delivery on it. Everyone will agree that it does not make sense to spend hundreds of thousands of euro constructing a purpose-built maternity theatre adjacent to the maternity suite and not use it. We can go back to the past about resource allocations and all the rest but we need to make sure we do the right thing.

This issue does not just relate to maternity services. While the Minister of State will ask the national women and infants health programme to engage with Saolta in terms of maternity requirement, he should remember that for every day this theatre is not commissioned he is denying the people of Donegal another theatre because the fourth theatre is out of use. It has to be retained at all times for emergency caesarean sections. It cannot be used for inpatient procedures, therefore, it has a knock-on effect in the hospital at large. I emphasise that this is not just about doing the best for the women and the children of Donegal, it is also a way of alleviating the pressure in terms of waiting lists. We have hospital overcrowding yet there is a large space at Letterkenny University Hospital that has been lying empty for the past 18 years.

I am convinced that the Minister of State understands this issue. I hope he does, and I hope this will add to the urgency in respect of it. There is a solution. We do not have to pay a fortune to build this theatre. It is already built. The equipment is in place but we need the staff now to support it. By doing what I propose, we will relieve pressure in other parts of the hospital, which is what we are supposed to be all about.

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