Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his new role and wish every Senator well in this term. I hope, like my colleague the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, to be here for the next five years to engage and debate with Members of Seanad Éireann.

I thank the Senator for raising this issue, which I know is very important to him. The Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, sends his apologies and hopes to engage with the Senator on this matter at a later date. Roscommon University Hospital is a model 2 hospital within the Saolta University Health Care Group. It provides a significant range of hospital services to patients in the region including extended day surgery, certain acute medicine services and local injuries services. It also provides a wide array of diagnostic services including endoscopy, laboratory medicine, point of care testing and radiology, as well as specialist rehabilitation medicine and palliative care. The hospital has 86 inpatient beds and includes an acute mental health unit.

Roscommon University Hospital plays an essential role as part of the Saolta group of hospitals and will continue to do so into the future. We know that the future growth in health care will be in the areas of chronic disease management, day surgery, diagnostics and rehabilitation. The activity levels of model 2 hospitals such as Roscommon University Hospital will continue to increase over the coming years as these hospitals specialise in providing these services to meet the needs of their local populations.

A new endoscopy unit at the hospital opened on a phased basis on 1 June 2016. When fully operational, all endoscopy procedures will be carried out in the new unit, freeing up theatre capacity for more day surgery cases to be carried out in Roscommon. The official opening of the unit will take place later this year and I am sure Senator Leyden will attend, along with many colleagues.

The specialist rehabilitation unit planned for Roscommon University Hospital was one of the many projects in the HSE multi-annual capital plan 2015 to 2019 and internal HSE approval was granted to progress the development of the unit in 2015. The spatial plan for the hospital was approved in the first quarter of 2016 and the project team, comprising hospital, clinical and estates personnel, is currently being assembled. Following this work by the project team, the project will move to the next stage. The HSE has advised the Department of Health that funding for the project would be considered in the 2017 to 2021 multi-annual period. It is my expectation that every effort will be made to fund this project as early as possible in that time period.