Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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316. To ask the Minister for Health his views on claims by the former director of the national pancreas transplant programme that Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9, is abandoning patients on the waiting list and that the hospital and the Health Service Executive are taking an unethical and callous approach by seeking to wind up the transplant programme without telling patients; his views that it is unconscionable that four months after the retirement of the director no plan has been made for seriously ill patients; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16644/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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At the end of 2014, two consultant transplant surgeons left the renal and pancreas transplant programme at Beaumont Hospital, one on retirement and the second on leave of absence for professional development purposes. Given the limited number of surgeons who specialise in transplantation, the filling of any vacancies poses a challenge. Every effort is currently being made to fill these vacancies.

Beaumont Hospital is collaborating with St Vincent’s University Hospital in relation to a combined approach to kidney/pancreas transplants, as well as the development of an intra-abdominal organ retrieval service. It is proposed that pancreatic transplants, of which 6 were performed in 2014, will move to St Vincent’s University Hospital this year. While the transfer of such transplants to St Vincent’s has been agreed in principle, it will take some time to make the detailed arrangements to facilitate the commencement of this work. Most pancreas transplants are combined with a kidney transplant. The arrangements being put in place for such cases will involve transplant surgeons from both St Vincent’s Hospital and Beaumont Hospital working together on the St Vincent’s campus.

The nine patients who are on the waiting list for a pancreas transplant are being contacted to reassure them that the pancreatic transplantation programme will continue.