The Government-backed Hanly report on hospital reorganisation came under fresh attack yesterday after Clare County Council adopted a Fianna Fáil motion to reject the report's recommendation to downgrade A&E services at Ennis General Hospital.
Also yesterday, at a meeting of the Association of Health Boards in Mullingar, a number of Fianna Fáil councillors expressed outrage at plans to both abolish health boards and replace A&E units at smaller hospitals with minor injury units.
The former Fianna Fáil junior minister, Mr Jackie Fahey, who is a member of the South Eastern Health Board, said the mood at the meeting was one of intense anger. He claimed lives would be lost if A&E units at smaller hospitals were closed as it would leave many people having to travel up to 80 miles to a casualty department at night.
Responding to the proposal in the prospectus report to abolish health boards, he said having councillors on health boards was to the benefit of patients as they highlighted patients' problems publicly.
"We have successfully being doing this for years, and I feel that if the public representatives had been members of the blood bank they would have blown the whistle on what was going on there years ago," he added.
"We hope to have a further meeting with the Minister for Health and we hope we can convince him not to abolish health boards," Mr Fahey said.
The chairman of the Association of Health Boards, Mr Jack Bourke, a member of the Mid Western Health Board, said if the Hanly report was implemented there would be only two full-scale A&E units in Munster, in Cork and Limerick.
The Hanly report is to be piloted in the mid-west and east coast area health boards.
Meanwhile at the meeting of Clare County Council, a Fianna Fáil councillor, Mr Tom Burke, tabled a motion that the council reject without reservation the implications of the Hanly report as it applied to the A&E service at Ennis General Hospital.
The motion was endorsed by a number of speakers from the Fianna Fáil party before it was unanimously passed. The leader of the Fianna Fáil group in the council, Mr P.J. Kelly said: "The message to the top must be clear. Any downgrading of the A&E at Ennis General is unacceptable."
Mr Burke said he feared the A&E was being closed by stealth.An Independent councillor, Ms Patricia McCarthy, said the Hanly report was "off the wall" and had forgotten about patients. Last month the Clare Fianna Fáil TD, Mr Tony Killeen, said the proposal would not be acceptable. Consultants at the hospital and GPs from throughout Co Clare have also strongly opposed the plan.
Meanwhile Labour's health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus, said last night that there was now convincing evidence that the A&E at St Columcille's Hospital in Loughlinstown, south Dublin, should be retained.
In reply to a parliamentary question she was told that almost 70,000 patients had attended its A&E over the past three years.