FRONTLINE SERVICES should be protected “at all costs” at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, the Fianna Fáil chairman of the Oireachtas health committee said yesterday after visiting the hospital and receiving a briefing on its financial situation.
Seán Ó Fearghaíl said the committee would be making this point to HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm when he appears before the committee in two weeks.
“We realise that there has to be change, we realise that the movement is towards a combined paediatric centre at the Mater, we realise that there will naturally be some resistance to that, but we don’t accept that there should be any reduction in frontline services for children in the intervening period,” he said.
Asked if he wanted the cuts already in place, including bed closures, reversed, he said: “Well, we want the HSE to manage the problem effectively and to manage them in a manner that ensures that frontline services are not impacted on.”
If Prof Drumm could find savings elsewhere, the committee would suggest to him that he should, he added.
The committee members spent nearly three hours at the hospital. It was a factfinding visit following several weeks of controversy over cuts to services at the hospital which is facing a deficit of over €9 million this year unless it makes savings. It has already closed 25 beds and one operating theatre and the hospital admitted these will lead to longer waiting times for some children for clinical assessment and non emergency surgery.
But it says, contrary to the impression given by the Fine Gael TD Dan Neville following the committee’s visit to the hospital yesterday, “all emergencies will be cared for and it will do everything it can to protect the sickest patients”.
Mr Neville has said management couldn’t guarantee all emergencies would be dealt with.
Mr Ó Fearghaíl said the committee may recommend one individual be given full responsibility by the HSE for paediatric services, in the same way as Prof Tom Keane had been given responsibility for cancer control.
Fine Gael’s health spokesman Dr James Reilly said the meeting had been very useful and the hospital had pointed out that it was not inefficient, but was using the extra money it was given since 2004 to deliver increasingly complex care to a greater number of patients. A quarter of the extra money it was given had to go on pay awards brought in by the Government, he said.
He stressed the hospital’s budget had to be restored or 800 inpatients would lose out on treatment this year. The impact of the bed closures at Crumlin were already very real and painful with children having spinal operations postponed, he said.
He also said one child had to be sent to an intensive care bed in Belfast on Monday because none was available in Dublin. And another child had to be referred out of the country for psychiatric care.
The money Crumlin hospital required to keep beds open should come from reduced expenditure by the HSE on outside consultants, taxis and bonuses for those at the top, he added.
Mr Ó Fearghaíl and fellow Fianna Fáil committee member Charlie O’Connor indicated they would, despite their concerns about the cuts, support the Government when a Fine Gael motion condemning the cutbacks is voted on in the Dáil this week.
Meanwhile, a protest over the cuts organised by the Save Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Campaign will take place outside the hospital on Saturday at 2pm and there will also be silent protests outside the Dáil on Saturday and Sunday.