Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

The Comhairle na nOspidéal report on neurosurgical services in Ireland was released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act 1997 and its contents will be viewed with alarm throughout the country. Professor Ciaran Bolger described such services as a mess and said people were dying unnecessarily as a result.

Worse than this, for the people of the west, the report states it is not necessary to have a third neurosurgical unit, in addition to the units at Beaumont Hospital and Cork University Hospital, at University College Hospital, Galway. When one considers the composition of the group that came to this conclusion, it is no wonder such a finding was reached. Very few representatives on it come from the west and there is a strong bias against the provision of services to the region.

As a former member of the Western Health Board, I am aware that every service and appointment won for the west in the area of health came as a result of a battle, as though they were things to which the west were not entitled.