No immediate change at hospital - Taoiseach

Services at Monaghan General Hospital would not be changed until there were better services to replace them in the northeast, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern insisted.

He said, however, that only about 15 people a year - "too small a number" - were treated in the high-dependency unit and they would be better and more safely treated in Drogheda.

Mr Ahern added that the two sides in the row over services at the hospital were "not that far apart", and if there was "a bit of calmness" a solution could be reached.

Some of the hundreds of demonstrators from Monaghan who protested yesterday outside Leinster House for the retention of services at the hospital sat in the public gallery during Leaders' Questions as Joe Higgins (Socialist, Dublin West) pressed the Taoiseach to clarify the Government's position on the hospital.

Mr Higgins said there was a "total contradiction" between what Minister for Health Mary Harney said would happen in the next two years and what Fianna Fáil representatives told the protest outside the Dáil.

Mr Ahern said: "No service will be changed in Monaghan before a better service replaces it, and any change will be planned well in advance, and the change will be with the good of the patient in mind."

Mr Higgins said Ms Harney planned that the high-care unit, the seven-day, 24-hour medical services ward and the seven-day, A&E service would be reduced to 12 hours, with a similar paring back of X-ray facilities.

He said a Fianna Fáil Senator told demonstrators the Taoiseach was in full agreement with him that all current services should be maintained at the hospital.

Acute patients were "pushed off" to Cavan and Drogheda which currently accounted for 20 per cent of the national trolley count.

Mr Higgins said no date had ever been set for regional centres of medical excellence, "which are away in the dim and distant future".

Yet within two years all these services would be lost based on Ms Harney's plans "and she has already in place an implementation group to try and put that into effect".

The Taoiseach said he had met the Monaghan Action Group, hospital staff and some of the GPs. "There are a number of services which they have identified and which the HSE says it is prepared to keep open until better services can be agreed on."

There were about 15 patients a year in the high-dependency unit who would be better and safer cared for and dealt with in Drogheda.

Mr Ahern added that "the HSE has set down clearly in the documents that I have seen the services they will keep in Monaghan until a better service is produced anywhere else and the services they will keep in the long-term". This would take "a couple of years".

When Paudge Connolly (Ind, Cavan-Monaghan) said the Minister for Health had told them a "completely different story" last month, Mr Ahern reiterated that the HSE said it would not close any service until a better one was provided.