Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I understand that this is a very serious issue for the local communities. My own community was involved in exactly this small hospital framework with regard to the hospital in Loughlinstown. Changes were made. I backed those changes from the Opposition and I will tell the Deputies why I did so. I and the other four elected representatives from the constituency met the senior clinical team and I asked them if it was their unanimous view that this would save lives. We were all told that this would save lives and the real story, in fact, was how many lives not doing this earlier had cost. That is what I heard as an Opposition Deputy. Based on that, I said that if the experts and doctors were telling us this was going to save lives then it was something I would back. Ultimately, that was the right call and it has saved a lot of lives but the process was not done properly because people like the Deputies and I were left to explain it to the public. The clinicians were nowhere to be found.

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