Robbie Gallagher (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. The Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, was in the House last week to respond to a Commencement matter I tabled in respect of this issue. He talked about new thinking and new ideas to try to tackle this problem. He said that if we continue to do what we have always done, we will continue to get what we have always got. He put his finger on it. We need fresh thinking on this issue. I raised it in the context of taking a fresh look at smaller hospitals - I had Monaghan Hospital in mind - and the role they could play in helping to alleviate the overcrowding being experienced in accident and emergency departments throughout the country and in my region of Cavan and Drogheda. This follows comments made by Professor John Hyland, president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He said that the normal response during a trolley crisis is to cancel non-urgent and elective surgery. He spoke about the repercussions of that and the heartache, pain and suffering people go through for years only to get a telephone call in the week they are preparing themselves for an operation to tell them it is cancelled. We cannot lose sight of that. He made the point that their conditions deteriorate so much that they end up in accident and emergency departments again, which brings us back to square one.

I asked the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, to visit Monaghan Hospital and see what potential the facility has to offer. It has a state-of-the-art theatre that is not being utilised to its full capacity. It has what was an accident and emergency department at one time and is now a minor injuries unit. Again, it is the same size as the department in Cavan. I believe that campus could be doing more to help alleviate the problems being experienced country-wide. I wish to extend to the Minister the same invitation I extended to the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly. The Minister could visit with his colleague, hopefully in the not too distant future.