Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On the Minister of State's last point, 50 patients will come from UHL to the new unit. Twenty patients in the existing St. Conlon's facility are waiting to move into the kind of facility that the Minister of State is talking about. They will be left in the old St. Conlon's. I did not give the impression that HIQA turned down St. Conlon's. All I said was that HIQA had previously reported the need for a new nursing home in the area. The 96-bed unit mentioned by the Minister of State needs to be supplied. She spoke about the short term, 12 months and 18 months. In the case of St. Brigid's, we were told it would be 12 months. It is now four or five years down the line and it is never coming back. Four years ago, we were told there were plans in place for the Dean Maxwell facility, but there are not. The fear in Nenagh is that this is what will happen to St. Conlon's. That is the big worry. We have lambasted the Government and it was well deserved because of the conditions at UHL, but it needs to sort out the crisis there by carrying out the emergency care capacity review, providing the 96 beds that are needed and staffing them accordingly. If it could lift the embargo in the first place, that would help. As I said earlier, it does not make sense to start taking patients from UHL out to St. Conlon's. It is shifting the deckchairs. There is no common sense involved here. That unit that has been rejected by HIQA.

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