A four-year battle by a voluntary group to get the former Western Health Board to honour its promise to provide a small number of respite beds for cancer patients in north Galway shows no sign of ending. Eithne Donnellan and Siobhan Holliman report.
Building healthcare units without having funding set aside to staff them is not a new phenomenon.
Last July, a month after Fianna Fáil got a hammering in the local elections, the then Health Minister Micheál Martin announced a deal had been reached with the Department of Finance to allow for the phased opening of €400 million worth of idle healthcare facilities across the State. Martin admitted people were not happy to see badly needed units lying idle and how they voted in the election said as much.
Despite this there are still units left lying idle. One is a two-bedded respite unit for cancer patients in Tuam, Co Galway.
According to Tuam Cancer Care, a voluntary group which has campaigned for the beds for more than four years, all that is needed now to get the unit open is €150,000 in funding from the Health Service Executive (HSE) Western Region (formerly the Western Health Board) to pay nursing staff.
But there is no sign of the money being provided.
Bert Gillard, chairman of Tuam Cancer Care, says he cannot understand why there should be any hold-up in providing such a small amount of money to fund a badly needed service.
The beds are located in a specially created unit within a home for the aged run by the HSE West Region in Tuam called Aras Mhuire. Everything in the unit is in place. There are even duvets and pillows on the beds. The only stumbling block is funding for staff.
"It's very frustrating. We are a voluntary group trying to do the job of the health board and the Department of Health. We are trying to alleviate the suffering and anguish caused by cancer for both sufferers and their families and close friends. All we need is funding of €150,000 which isn't exactly lotto figures in terms of health expenditure today but it's just not being provided," says Gillard.
He recalls how the beds were promised by the Western Health Board, as it was then known, as far back as the year 2000. At that time cancer and other patients needing palliative care from the area could be accommodated close to home in the Bon Secours Hospital in Tuam.
But the hospital closed in April 2001. It was bought by the health board and it too remains idle.
The health board promised that the respite service the Bon Secours sisters had provided would not be lost to the town. The reality is it has been.
Tuam Cancer Care, which has nearly 200 people aged between five and 80 years using its support services, has been struggling since then to get the health board to honour its promise to provide an alternative respite service.
Margaret Feely, who was chairwoman of Tuam Cancer Care in 2001 and who has since lost her own battle against cancer, began bombarding the health board with letters seeking to have the respite service restored.
In one letter she described the trauma caused by the loss of the service: "The loss of this service means that families have the extra pressure if the patient needs hospital care at the terminal stage of cancer illness, of travelling to the hospice [in Galway city more than 30 km away] or one of the Galway hospitals instead of having them cared for locally, as was the case before the closure of the Bon Secours Hospital. This is totally unacceptable and I therefore ask that you address this matter urgently."
The health board indicated in November 2001 that it hoped to restore the service in early 2002 by providing a two-bed respite unit at Aras Mhuire.
But it was not until June 2002 that it applied for planning permission. The planning permission was granted in September 2002 and the work was put out to tender.
However, work on site did not begin until August 2003. Ultimately the Aras Mhuire building was refurbished at a cost to the health board of some €380,000 and within it the two-bed respite unit was created.
In March 2004 the health board said it would provide funding to Tuam Cancer Care to employ two nurses to staff the unit. The Irish Nurses Organisation said this would be insufficient to provide round-the- clock care to patients.
In September 2004 the health board wrote to the Department of Health seeking €150,000 for more nursing staff to allow the unit open. The department wrote back asking the health board to list its funding requests for palliative care services in order of priority. To date the funding sought hasn't been sanctioned.
Gillard feels a simple proposal that would help so many people has just got bogged down in bureaucracy.
Dr Jarlath Cahill, a local GP, says its hugely frustrating that the small amount of funding required to open the unit isn't being made available. "The unit would be a huge benefit to cancer patients and their families," he insists.
Independent Galway East TD Paddy McHugh recently put down a parliamentary question asking when funding would be provided to employ the required number of staff to enable the beds to open.
Replying on March 3rd last the junior health minister Sean Power said it was the responsibility of the Health Service Executive to provide palliative care.
"Accordingly, my department has requested the chief officer for the executive's western area to investigate the matter raised and to reply direct to the deputy," said Power.
The HSE West Region when contacted said negotiations were ongoing for additional resources to facilitate the opening of the unit.
Asked who it was in negotiations with, it effectively passed the blame for the delay in opening the unit to the national office of the HSE.
"Confirmation is awaited from the Health Service Executive in relation to additional resources and wholetime equivalents required. The Health Service Executive Western Area is in a position to open the beds once approval is received for the additional resources and wholetime equivalents required to facilitate the opening," it said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the national office of the HSE said it would consider the matter.
"Our national service plan for 2005 is being completed and this matter will receive due consideration," she said.
What does this mean? It means there is still no guarantee funding will be provided to open the unit any time soon.