Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Martin Browne for letting me share time. We want answers about St. Patrick's Hospital in Cashel. We want reassurance and something definite in respect of this matter.

St. Patrick's Hospital is a wonderful institution. My late mum did some time there. I cannot say enough about the staff and all the people there, including in the chapels and the church. I often attended mass there, when we had a church. We were expecting a 60-bed community unit to be delivered. That is what we were told all the way along at meetings and briefings and everything else, until a bombshell landed two or three weeks ago regarding the site now being too small. This is simply not true. I cannot use the word "lie" here, but this is a porky of the highest order. As Deputy Martin Browne said, there were 350 staff and patients there, many of them driving, and there was plenty of room for parking. I ask the Minister of State to pick some other issue besides this one.

Something else is going on here. The Minister of State closed the beautiful hospital in Carrick-on-Suir. It was shocking to do that to a community hospital with three hospice beds. I am worried too now about there being plenty of hospital beds in University Hospital Waterford. I worry because we were told the other day we are in competition now with Dungarvan, if you do not mind, for this community hospital. I am watching this matter very carefully. The Minister of State should not dare to take this facility out of County Tipperary, because it is needed. The community hospital is needed and the staff and everybody else is committed to it. Cashel lost too much back in the 1980s, when it lost to Clonmel, as well as the last time. It is not going to lose this time. The people there are ready for the Minister of State.

It has been stated that the greenfield site is suitable. It is not, and it is not accessible. We have a site, just let us build on it. This is a listed building but it can easily be adapted. There was no problem before with engineers' reports or anything else. Costings in this regard have not even been done. What the Minister of State is overseeing in the HSE, along with the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is nothing short of outrageous. I refer to officials being able to do what they like and tell us what they want to any time they like and different stories then being presented by politicians from the Minister of State's party. This is just not acceptable. The people of Cashel deserve this facility and they are going to get it.

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