Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It might interest the Tánaiste to know that I asked the Library and Research Service, L&RS, to conduct a review for me last year. It told me that it could not do it because it did not have adequate transparency around data. That is something that the House needs to take up.

I will digress to share my frustration about capital downgrades. This morning we heard about a downgrade of vascular surgical services at University Hospital Waterford. That came on the back, I would say, of another steered report that has again ignored completely the population demographics down there; the fact that we have a rising population; the fact that we have a model 4 interventional cardiology and oncology service; the fact we have one of the busiest trauma units in the country; and the fact that we have one of the busiest orthopaedic services in the country.

Yet again, there was another steered report to send services up the road to Cork and take them out of Waterford.

A couple of days ago, the Tánaiste made a reference in the national media to difficulties in recruitment to the cath lab in University Hospital Waterford when, in fact, interview panels were not even put together and applications were not even made available for the jobs because they are not even advertised. The Tánaiste has been getting briefings and in the past he sometimes suffered from getting failed briefings from the South-South West Hospital Group.

What I really want to know is when will the Government start to defend the south-east region model 4 hospital with adequate finance and capital?When will it publish some funding strategy for University Hospital Waterford?

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