Written answers

Thursday, 6 May 2010

Department of Health and Children

Hospitals Building Programme

5:00 pm

Photo of Joe CareyJoe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Question 50: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the position regarding the promised capital re-development of Ennis General Hospital, County Clare; when the project will commence and be completed; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18467/10]

Photo of Joe CareyJoe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Question 51: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the services and staffing levels that will be available in Ennis General Hospital, County Clare, on completion of the promised capital re-development; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18468/10]

Photo of Joe CareyJoe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Question 52: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the role she envisages for Ennis General Hospital, County Clare, into the future; if it will continue to be regarded as an acute medical hospital; if the intensive care and high dependency unit will be maintained together with associated anaesthetic cover; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18471/10]

Photo of Mary HarneyMary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 50 to 52, inclusive, together.

The HSE has made significant progress on reconfiguring acute hospital and related services in the Mid West region informed by the Teamwork/Horwath Report and the Health Information and Quality Authority Report on Ennis, which was published in April 2009. These Reports highlighted the need for changes to be made in the organisation and provision of acute hospital services across the Mid West region as they found services there to be too fragmented, to carry increased risks for patients and staff and to be unsustainable in their present form.

The reconfiguration of services in the Mid-West Region has involved the cessation of 24-hour Accident and Emergency services at Ennis and Nenagh and the transfer of all planned and emergency in-patient surgery from the two hospitals to Limerick Regional Hospital. Ambulance and paramedic services in Clare and North Tipperary have been enhanced. Ennis and Nenagh hospitals now provide an urgent care/minor injuries service for 12 hours a day as part of a regional Accident and Emergency structure. These hospitals also now undertake an expanded range of day case surgery and diagnostic work.

The HSE's draft capital plan is currently under consideration and details of capital projects will be made available when the plan has been approved. As the Deputy will be aware, plans for services at individual hospitals, or regional networks of hospitals, are drawn up and implemented by the HSE, subject to overall Government policy, including policy on patient safety and quality care. I regret that due to industrial action I am not in a position to provide a substantive response to your Parliamentary Question. If this matter remains of continuing concern to you, however, I would invite you to raise it with me again in due course.

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