John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I ask again for a debate on the concept of introducing dedicated step-down clinics within the HSE. This would allow people to be moved from major hospitals, freeing up beds and allowing them time to recuperate properly in a step-down clinic. I raise this matter because I come from the town of Dundalk, which is in a Border area. On the other side of the Border, the National Health Service, NHS, in the North is moving services from Daisy Hill Hospital back to Craigavon Area Hospital. Louth County Hospital was dramatically downgraded ten or 15 years ago. It is as if the two hospitals are on the edge of the world. There is no reason that someone who has an accident in the Cooley Peninsula or north Louth should be red-lighted all the way to Drogheda when Daisy Hill Hospital is only 5 km or 10 km away. I would love to see a dedicated cross-Border health strategy in parallel with proper step-down clinics. Why I talk about step-down clinics, the Louth hospital was downgraded a number of years ago. There are now people calling for the full reopening of the hospital. This is disingenuous because it is not going to happen. Politically speaking, that is simply not going to happen. It is just for people to get an easy by-line or a front page in the local newspaper. Let us do something properly that we can do. Changing those hospitals into properly formed step-down clinics would be a really useful way to make sure that they are properly used. For example, in the north east, we have Dundalk, Drogheda, Navan, Cavan and Monaghan and all the pressure from those areas is going straight on to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. If we consider Louth as an example, we have a fully functioning hospital that we can utilise and turn into a step-down clinic to get people out of our hospitals and give them a proper amount of time to recuperate. If a person has a stroke, for example, and cannot go home because he or she is waiting for a housing adaptation grant to make the home suitable, then step-down clinics are really useful. It really annoys me and is disingenuous when people use stuff like this as political football to suggest reopening an entire hospital which has been downgraded for ten or 15 years simply because it is a nice soundbite. Let us do something proper about it. Let us have a look at hospital facilities around the country that can be utilised properly as step-down clinics. So many more services could go into a hospital like the Louth hospital in Dundalk if it was properly utilised. At the same time, it is about being responsible and not just suggesting reopening this and that in response to the health crisis.