Mark Dearey (Green Party)

I thank the Minister of State for taking this question - it a is double question - on the new emergency department at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda which, although it is standing and ready to go, has been lying idle for many months now. We are several months past the anticipated opening date, which was last March. The emergency department has been featured many times on television and the public will be familiar with how it looks from the outside, but nobody knows what it looks like on the inside. An article in The Drogheda Independent stated the facility contains separate resuscitation facilities for children and adults, separate access for patients who arrive by ambulance, a separate minor injuries clinic, X-ray facilities integrated into the unit, sub-wait areas and facilities for care of the dying. In short, it will transform people's experience of accident and emergency throughout the north-east region, yet it lies idle.

The issue is staffing. I ask the Minister of State for an update on what is being done to help break the logjam in that area, with regard to the HSE and the unions representing the workers involved. I understand many of the staff who will move from Dundalk are unhappy about the terms or are in a state of confusion about what is happening. They deserve, at the earliest moment, some clarity on that.

Notwithstanding that, it is my contention that, in broad terms, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital is not a place in which Dundalk people care to be treated. It is not a place I see as the new regional hospital. It was never intended to be that. It is on a site which is too small; everybody recognises that. Navan was identified some years ago, after an extensive period of research by an outside consultancy, as the best location. It always struck me as a decision to serve the north-west Dublin rim and parts of the north east, but fails the people of Dundalk and the Carlingford Peninsula, as well as people from parts of Monaghan and as far as Cavan, who would be expected to make a cross-country trek on very poor country roads to Navan. It is not real.

Dr. Colm Quigley, who is overseeing the transformation programme in our region, has spoken of the possibility of the regional facility being located closer to Dundalk in future. I spoke today about the delivery of services on a shared basis with Northern Ireland and can see a case for regionalising the service on a cross-Border basis. It would require a huge amount of work. It is a grand project, but one which deserves serious attention. Authorities on both sides of the Border take the concept seriously.

On accident and emergency services in Dundalk, it is a matter of huge concern to the people of a gateway town that it will be the only gateway without its own accident and emergency department should the HSE's proposals for health services in the north east be seen through to fruition. In spatial planning terms, there is a very strong case to be made for the retention of the service if Dundalk is to achieve its status as a gateway. It is, according to the most recent analysis of the indicators, the weakest performing gateway. Removing hospital services which investors, in particular inward investors, consider very carefully along with educational facilities, with which Dundalk is blessed, will affect the area.

There are overarching economic, spatial, planning, but above all, health reasons why a town which is anticipated to grow to small city status should have access to its own accident and emergency department. I look forward to a positive response from the Minister of State in that regard, notwithstanding the recent worrying comments on cutbacks in accident and emergency services due to budgetary constraints.