MEMBERS of Abbeyleix and District Hospital Action Committee have requested an urgent meeting with Minister for Health James Reilly.
Committee spokesman Gary O’Keeffe said the Minister had agreed to visit the facility before 2012. At a previous meeting, “the Minister had given us a commitment that he’d be there before the new year”, he explained.
Members of the committee met Dr Reilly following the Health Service Executive’s proposal to close the community nursing unit and relocate 28 long-stay residents last November.
A subsequent legal challenge was resolved when the HSE agreed to quash the closure order and begin meaningful consultation on the proposal.
“We need to be urgently part of that consultation process and we have the backing of the residents and their families,” Mr O’Keeffe remarked.
According to Mr O’Keeffe, the committee recently sent a registered letter calling for an urgent meeting with the Minister.
Commenting on the Minister's remarks on local communities taking control of publicly run nursing homes, as reported in yesterday's Irish Times, Mr O'Keeffe said: "We were heartened by the fact that what we have been talking about as the logical way of getting things done was being listened to."
Laois-Offaly Labour Senator John Whelan believes the Minister may visit the nursing unit before the Dáil resumes.
Mr Whelan believes the action committee, staff, local representatives and members of the wider community should have automatically been involved in the consultation process.
However, he said he was encouraged by Dr Reilly’s recent comments on community nursing homes.
“I’m waiting for him [Dr Reilly] to contact me as he said he would,” Mr Whelan said.
“To be fair to him, what he said was he would visit the hospital over the Christmas holidays.”
Representatives from the Department of Health were unavailable yesterday when contacted to comment on whether the Minister would meet members of the committee.