No decision on new northeast hospital, says Ahern

 DÁIL REPORT:  THE BOARD of the Health Service Executive (HSE) will today discuss the report by independent consultants recommending Navan as the location for a new northeast regional hospital.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Dáil that "no decision has been made by the Government or the HSE on the location of the new regional hospital in the northeast".

"No proposal has come before the health committee or the Government in this regard."

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny claimed the hospital was a "phantom entity", and that the Government, the Minister for Health and the HSE chief executive had created a "pointless crisis where services have been stripped away from Monaghan and from other hospitals in the locality on the basis that the extra services would be provided in the new regional entity".

As a result there was "complete frustration" in the region.

He raised the issued following comments last week by Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern that there was no money to build such a facility.

Mr Kenny asked the Taoiseach to publish a list of capital projects in the health area from the National Development Plan that would proceed and those that would not go ahead.

The Taoiseach told the Fine Gael leader he "should not be surprised that resources have not been set aside in the capital programme for a proposal that has not even been made by the board of the HSE".

Funding through the National Development Plan "for the development of services in the northeast will be allocated in the light of specific plans to achieve patient-safety and quality-care objectives".

Mr Ahern said, however, that the building of such a facility was unlikely to be completed within the lifetime of the Government. This was "based on the time it takes to undertake major hospital developments. It is not going to happen."

He said the HSE had stated 18 months ago that it would examine services in the northeast, and "that a hospital in one location would be best for the region covering Monaghan, Cavan, Meath and Louth".

The HSE had only now advised the Department of Health "that it recently received a report from a consultancy firm it commissioned to carry out an independent study on the possible location of a new regional hospital".

The study was to take account of the various criteria over the next two decades.

That "would not mean that all the other regional hospitals would close but that it [the new hospital] would be the centre of excellence that would carry the main specialities".

Mr Kenny, referring to the "pointless crisis" created in health services in the region, said Cavan and Drogheda hospitals were "bursting at the seams".

When the Taoiseach said that "we do not want to start closing and displacing services, making life difficult for the present-day population" in advance of "having a clearly-articulated plan in the longterm", there were angry retorts from the Opposition that "that's what you've been doing for years" and "that's what the Government did with cancer services".