Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am not sure how up to date the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, is with the dialysis situation in Tallaght Hospital. It is the regional centre of excellence for the Dublin Midlands hospital group and provides regional services such as 24-hour acute kidney dialysis care and home dialysis therapies. The demand for haemodialysis continues to grow as predicted by the national renal office and Tallaght Hospital's in-house assessments.

Dialysis activity at Tallaght Hospital has increased to more than 30,000 dialysis treatments per year. It has a designed capacity for 9,000 treatments a year. However, it has to deal with 30,000 treatments. The remainder were delivered in satellite dialysis units. That is basically private and costly. That is double the national average. Satellite dialysis units cannot cover complex medical diseases. Tallaght Hospital provides end-stage kidney disease management for St. James's Hospital. International best practice has mandated specific guidelines in regard to isolation facilities, patient segregation and wash facilities etc. to prevent hospital-acquired infections and blood-borne virus infections in haemodialysis units. These guidelines were adopted in 2006. New dialysis units have been commissioned and opened in other areas but the problem with Tallaght is that it is clearly not suitable. Tallaght Hospital's in-centre haemodialysis unit is not compliant with these 2006 guidelines. There is insufficient space around each dialysis station.

The heart of the matter is that there was an agreement to go ahead with the new unit. It was agreed in 2017 and then cancelled in January 2018. It is impacting on patients. The strategy behind it does not make sense. The unit in Tallaght has insufficient capacity to meet requirements and is not compliant with the Department of Health. There is also a shortage of capacity to deliver high dependency dialysis in the region. It does not make sense that the Health Service Executive, HSE, in its wisdom decided not to go ahead with this. I hope in her answer that the Minister of State will have some reasons why this is the case. Deferring this project will reverse the effect of the care provided to patients from south Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, Laois and Offaly with end stage kidney disease.

All new patients who enter dialysis will have to receive haemodialysis in contracted satellite services. I asked how much we were paying for these private dialysis services. I got a response from the Minister of State's Department and the answer for 2017 was €4.056 million. That does not include transport costs for dialysis patients, which was €1.2 million. It impacts on patients but it also impacts on the costs and the staff within the hospital. I cannot understand why the project has not gone ahead. We need answers. The space is there. It is ready to go. I talked to the local authority and there are no difficulties with planning permission. It is up to the HSE and, more importantly, the Minister to explain why the project has not gone ahead and when it will.

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