Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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862. To ask the Minister for Health the additional services that the HSE considers are necessary to ensure that the accident and emergency department in Navan Hospital is safe. [34194/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Our Lady’s Hospital Navan is one of nine designated Model 2 Hospitals under the Smaller Hospitals’ Framework which was approved by Government in 2013. Navan will be the last of those hospitals to transition to Model 2. 

As the Deputy will be aware, the HSE has proposed a process of planned service changes at Navan and has advised that these changes are necessary to support safe service delivery on a sustained basis, and are driven first and foremost by patient safety considerations and very real clinical concerns. The HSE has said that, as a small hospital, Navan does not have the range of specialties needed to deal with the relatively small number of critically ill and unstable patients who may present to the ED currently. 

While recognising the very real clinical concerns identified, the Government is clear that several important issues, including additional capacity in other hospitals impacted and the continued ability of people in the Navan area to access emergency and urgent care, would need to be fully addressed before any proposed transition by the HSE could be considered.