Frank Feighan (Fine Gael)

I thank the Labour Party Members for proposing this motion, particularly the call for the Government to drop the Hanly report and upgrade the accident and emergency services currently available in general hospitals around the country. The health service exists to serve the needs of the sick and injured and that must determine any changes, particularly those that might disadvantage patients.

Many people oppose the report but there are positive aspects to it — at all times I highlight the positive and oppose the negative in this House. The proposal to concentrate accident and emergency services in centralised locations, however, is mistaken and would cause serious problems to people needing urgent care. When the Hanly report was first introduced in this House, a constituency colleague who was a former Minister in this Government was chairman of the Western Health Board. He had to courage to stand up and say that the report should be binned. I am disappointed that Senator Leyden's colleagues have not listened to him but he was right on this occasion. We disagree on many matters but I pay tribute to his vision of where this report should be. Perhaps he has signed the Fine Gael petition on medical services in Roscommon, he signs many things.

It is the job of the Opposition to question and dissect all proposals in the report. We recognise the value of multi-disciplinary teams but the reduction of the number of hospitals delivering accident and emergency services from 40 to 12 is not safe or acceptable. The plan is an experiment and experiments in health service delivery cause suffering and death if they go wrong.

The Hanly report spells disaster for Roscommon. It is anti-rural — we cannot replace a hospital with an ambulance service but we are supposed to be thankful for this. If a person in Roscommon has a heart attack, he or she must be driven to Galway because the hospital in Roscommon will be closed. Anyone who has travelled the road from Roscommon to Galway knows that it is not a super-highway. There is a golden hour following a heart attack but by the time a person reaches Galway and gets through the traffic there, that hour is gone. Patients could die on the road because even a first rate ambulance service cannot operate on a second rate road structure.

Consultants at Limerick Regional Maternity Hospital have warned that they may be forced to turn pregnant women away because staff levels are too low to ensure safe deliveries. That does not reflect a state of the art health service. According to the hospital there is one consultant for every 750 births when the institute of gynaecology recommends a patient to consultant ratio of 500:1. This is a crisis waiting to happen. The last Minister spent his time producing reports. He was the Minister for fudge, always kicking issues to touch. The new Minister should act on the reports and not kick them to touch.

The death of a 72 year old Monaghan man from a heart attack as an ambulance took him to Cavan General Hospital led to renewed calls for Monaghan hospital being put back in action as soon as possible. The Hanly report does not address the fundamental problems of bed shortages in major hospitals or the failure to provide suitable step down facilities that results in people spending too much time in hospital and not in the community where they should be.

I wish the Minister well in her job because much relies on the success of the health service. The Hanly report goes about it in the wrong way. It is anti-rural.