Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would also like to speak on this parliamentary question. A shameful political decision was taken in 2009 to downgrade Ennis, Nenagh and St John's hospitals. The intention was to make UHL a central of excellence but this never materialised. It was a failure in 2009 and has become a woeful failure for the people of the mid-west every year since. This did not happen on the Minister's watch. I commend the Minister on taking a lot of action during his tenure to address this issue. He has beefed up capacity in the mid-west but we need to look at the issue, which is that many hundreds of thousands of people cannot be funnelled through one accident and emergency department. In the 1980s, the mid-west had five accident and emergency departments with around half of the population. It is now all going through one 24-hour facility at UHL. Addressing the UHL problem, which gets spotlighted every day of the week, has to happen. It also has to happen in the satellite hospitals of the region. I also support the call for Ennis to be upgraded again to have a 24-hour hour accident and emergency department. The Minister mentioned safety issues highlighted by the clinical reports he referenced. What are those issues and what can be addressed? We do not expect short-term outcomes but we would love the Minister in the medium to long term to say "Let us do this and let us pave a pathway that would see it reopening again".

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