Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Colm O'Rourke, one of the legendary figures of Gaelic games, was recently appointed manager of the Meath senior football team. It is a role he has long coveted and his appointment has enthused Meath fans with the hope of a return to glory. I invite the Minister of State to imagine that, as Colm sets off on this journey, the GAA told him he can be Meath manager and have the title and the prestige but it is not going to allow him to have any footballers whatsoever. It might let him have a few farm animals - a few donkeys or goats to put in the full-forward line - but that is it, and he should go off and win the All-Ireland. I ask the Minister of State to hold that thought.

Across the road from the school of which Colm is principal is Navan hospital, which, as of this morning, still has an operational emergency department. However, following a letter from the HSE on Monday, there is a plan - irony of ironies, this involves a former Meath football colleague of Colm's, Gerry McEntee - under which the HSE has directed that the ambulance service will now bypass Navan hospital in the case of all patients bar, in the words of its report, elderly persons who fall off a chair and have no respiratory problems. A bit like the job of the manager of the Meath football team, the hospital can have its emergency department and the neon light flashing above the door to signal that it is open but it cannot have any patients.

I am a patient man but my patience with those who purport to run the health service in the name of the people of Meath is over. We discussed this issue in the Chamber in June. In the intervening six months, those running the health service have done nothing to build capacity at Drogheda hospital to facilitate their marvellous plan. They simply leak documents and minutes of meetings and spin lines about how people will die if they do not get their way. They are bullies. What will happen if they get their way? Where will the people of Navan and the rest of County Meath go? Are they going to implement a plan like the one put in place at Dublin Airport during summer and put up tents at Drogheda hospital so that people from Navan can be triaged out in the car park? That is where we are heading. Drogheda hospital does not have the capacity required. I have spoken to the people at the hospital. They do not have the capacity.

The HSE has pulled this trick once before, when it closed the emergency department at Dundalk hospital. It took it three years to get things right in Drogheda afterwards, with the influx of people from Dundalk and the surrounding area down to Drogheda. The HSE implements a plan with no resources or backup, and who suffers? It is the ordinary people, the people in whose name the HSE purports to run a health service. My patience with the HSE has gone. It does not represent the best interests of ordinary people.It represents the best interests of consultants and medical practitioners. The stroke unit it has closed this week hurts people; it does not help people. I want to hear from the Department of Health, which is the boss of the HSE, in case it has forgotten that with its leaked memos, how it proposes to actually implement this marvellous plan.