*Tánaiste Simon Harris is welcomed to Kilkishen by Clare TD, Joe Cooney (FG) along with Cllr Pat Burke (FG) and Cllr Conor Ryan (FG). Photograph: Kevin Donovan.
TÁNAISTE, Simon Harris (FG) has said an additional hospital facility is needed in the Mid-West region, weeks before the Health Minister is to issue recommendations on actions to follow in the aftermath of HIQA’s review.
Ennis Hospital is under-utilised and another hospital is a necessary requirement in the region, the Tánaiste stated during a visit to Co Clare while stressing that reconfiguration which resulted in the closure of the accident and emergency unit in Ennis has not served the area well.
After turning on the Christmas lights in Kilkishen, the newly appointed Minister for Finance detailed that he believes the Mid-West needs another hospital which is certainly top of Santa’s list for all health advocates in the region.
At the end of September, HIQA published a review of urgent and emergency healthcare services in the region with three options outlined. Option A is to expand University Hospital Limerick (UHL) at its current site, Option B is to extend the UHL campus with a second nearby site under a shared model, and Option C is to build a new Model 3 hospital with a second emergency department for the region.
Speaking in Kilkishen, the Tánaiste commented, “I am of the view that the Mid-West will need an additional hospital facility, that is my view, we have to look at what we do to get from here to there because there are people in the region today who need more bed capacity and how we can better use our hospitals like Ennis is really important, we have a roadmap now and I think HIQA have done a good piece of work done. I look forward to the Minister coming back with recommendations by the end of the year”.
He added, “I’m really pleased to see the outcome of this review, when I was Taoiseach I was very determined this review would take place because the people of the Mid-West have not been well served by hospital reconfiguration, they have not been well served at all, I welcome some of the improvements we have seen in UHL like extra bed capacity, it is a statement of the blinding obvious that that in itself will not be enough. The HIQA report has a menu of options, one is to continue to grow capacity at UHL which is a no brainer, it needs to happen, the second is to look at an additional site and the third is the idea of having a further model three hospital in the region. The Minister for Health is due to come back to the Government by the end of the year which is not far away, on the next steps she intends to take and I will be guided by that.
Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG) is considered to be Harris’ biggest internal threat for the leadership of Fine Gael. “I don’t have political rivals in my own party, I’m the leader of the Fine Gael party,” he remarked.
Her proposal to Cabinet will determine which of three options presented by HIQA is endorsed by the Government. “People who work in our health services work bloody hard and they do a great job. We now have a record level of funding in health, we have seen huge increases in health, we have to see the health service work for the people that depend on it, that means hospitals not basing things around what works for them but what works for the region. I’ve always when I think of the Mid-West know there is a network of hospitals with huge potential to better network them, hospitals like Ennis whilst more is happening remain under-utilised, there is much more that could be done there. I do think the HIQA piece of work which was commissioned when I was Taoiseach was a really important piece, it basically says and we all knew this to be true, it gives us an evidence based that the current situation and the status quo is not an acceptable situation. We are accelerating bed capacity in UHL which is a really good thing to do, that in itself will not be enough, I look forward to Jennifer bringing that proposal back to Cabinet in the next few weeks”.
Friends of Ennis Hospital have called on the Minister for Health to enact emergency legislation to fast-track the development of a model three and four hospital in the region. Harris acknowledged that such projects need to be delivered quicker once construction commences. “Step one is for the Minister to bring forward her plan for how she recommends the Government responds to the HIQA’s report and we expect that very shortly, in fairness to the Friends of the Hospital that is a very fair point. It is a cause of huge frustration for people right across Ireland and I can assure you it is a cause of huge frustration to me that it takes too long to deliver key infrastructure projects even when funding is in place the length of time it can take from announcing for a project to a project being delivered.
“We’re currently carrying out a piece of work broader than health about how to deliver huge infrastructure more quickly, how do you consider emergency legislation, we did it for Brexit where we allowed Rosslare Europort both be developed in a quicker manner, we also did it for temporary gas storage so I wouldn’t rule out health projects being part of it, Jack Chambers will bring proposals to Cabinet by the start of next month about the terms of key infrastructure and certainly health is critical infrastructure”.
Given that forty percent of the Clare population live outside the ‘golden hour’ of reaching an emergency department, there is anger locally at the continued under-investment in emergency health services. The Tánaiste maintained another hospital in the region deserved to take precedence over The Metro in Dublin which is likely to cost over €9.5bn. “I want to say to the people of Clare what I say every time I visit because I mean it and I believe it, the people of the Mid-West and Clare have been badly served by reconfiguration, that is the history of it, our job is to rectify that situation, the extra capacity going into UHL will make a meaningful difference, we’re already seeing some benefits of that but it ain’t enough of itself, we have to do more, HIQA is very clear on that so it is no longer my political view or the view of Friends of Ennis Hospital the good people that they are, now HIQA have said more needs to be done.
“We will take the report very seriously, we want to work on a cross-party basis, I hate this idea of politicians playing politics with people’s health, this is about everybody in Dáil Éireann pulling together, the last Dáil was about identifying there was a challenge in the Mid-West, this Dáil has to be about getting on with rectifying that, nothing is off the table in terms of how we move forward and I know the Minister will be very eager to engage with hospital groups like that,” he added.
