Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, the main hospital in the north-east region, Our Lady of Lourdes, issued a statement effectively urging sick people to stay away because of overcrowding. It said that the most critically ill patients are prioritised for treatment but, as a result, some patients may experience delays. By the way, the normal delay in that hospital is 13 hours. If you are lucky, that is the normal delay. I have spoken consistently over the last decade in here and in the Dáil in defence of Navan hospital, a hospital which the HSE has tried to close on numerous occasions over the past 20 years.

It got me thinking because two years ago, the then HSE chief executive, Paul Reid, and the clinical officer, Dr. Colm Henry, again made another attempt to close the emergency department in Navan hospital which they said was unsafe. They said they would direct more resources to Drogheda to cope with this plan of closing the emergency department in Navan hospital. Two years later and the situation in the shining light they said was Drogheda is now as bad as ever, if not worse. A group of brave consultants at that time nearly two years ago, nearly 20 of them, told Stephen Donnelly that people would die if the HSE was allowed to get away with this plan. They said they had minimal confidence in Drogheda's ability to deal with the inevitable surge in clinical activity.

Two years later, the trolley count in Drogheda is worse than ever and I can only imagine what would have happened if politicians had not come in here and fought against the so-called best medical advice. Where would we be today in Navan if we had let the HSE get away with its plan? Where would we be if the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, had not stood up for the case I made to him that we need to retain geographical, regional health services, which is the way to go in line with our population? I urge the Leader, in the time we have left in this Chamber, that we change direction and continue to have a commitment from Government to make sure regional health facilities are kept open. As Senator Erin McGreehan has said, we need to ensure there is investment in those hospitals we have which clearly do not have the capacity to deal with the numbers that are using them.