Mark Dearey (Green Party)

I ask the Leader for an urgent resumption of the debate on health services we had in the House with the Minister for Health and Children the week before last. During that debate, I put it to her that the reconfiguration of health services in the north east was being done in a hasty and premature way given the inability of the Lourdes hospital in Drogheda to deal with the additional load resulting from the closure of acute services at the Louth hospital.

It is with a heavy heart that I have to say this move has gone ahead. I am concerned, angry and dismayed at this move. The Minister has the power under Part 7 of the Health Act 2004 to direct the Health Service Executive review its transformation programme in the north east and suspend it pending a decision on whether the Lourdes hospital is fit to be the de facto regional hospital.

I believe it is not and most people in the region do not see it as such either. Given its litany of disastrous malpractice and record on hygiene, which I admit it is making strenuous efforts to improve, it is not fit to take the additional load that is about to be imposed on it. I look forward to the resumption of the debate on health services so that the Minister can respond to my plea for a suspension of the transformation programme in the north east.

For Senator Norris's information, the Green Party always opposed the groceries order being revoked. While I was not a Member at the time, as a councillor I opposed it being rescinded. I saw such a move as not being in the best interests of the indigenous food sector. Instead, I saw it as a breach of the ancient model of retailing of selling as much as possible in as small a space as possible in as short a time as possible. The order stood generations and town centres well. It is a model that needs to be re-examined now that the era of cheap credit and energy, which led to the proliferation of the large out-of-town retail park model is coming to an end. Town centres are beginning to claim for themselves their function again. In that light, the groceries order needs to be revisited.