No bed closures in Tallaght this year - Cowen

There will be no enforced redundancies and no bed closures in Tallaght Hospital this year, the Minister for Health told the Dail.

Mr Cowen said he had agreed to provide £1 million to develop top priority services at the hospital, once the three-person group assisting the board was satisfied, in line with the recommendations of the Deloitte & Touche report, that sufficient progress had been made on the implementation of the consultants' report to resume the phased further development of services at the hospital. The Minister said the hospital's board agreed to a service plan for this year which, on the basis of the information available to him, complied with the requirements set out in the letter of determination.

"The plan provides for the full delivery of the approved level of services during 1999; there will be no enforced redundancies and the shedding of excess staff will be linked primarily to the completion of their short-term contracts; there will be no bed closures, other than those which occur seasonally.

"I also believe that the plan will provide a very good basis for resolving potential industrial relations problems, and I would like to take the opportunity to urge all staff to support the implementation of the plan."

Mr Cowen was responding to a Labour private member's motion calling for his resignation. The party's spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, claimed Mr Cowen had "failed abysmally to live up to the rigours of his office and that those who depend on healthcare, and those who work to provide healthcare, have increasingly lost faith in him."

She said the motion was grounded, not in some abstract political expediency, but in the reality that too many sick and vulnerable people had suffered and would continue to do so unless the Taoiseach seized the initiative and established a new basis for the healthcare system under different leadership.

"Tonight, as we debate this motion, there are literally thousands of sick and vulnerable people who are still waiting over 12 months on waiting lists and thousands of children waiting over six months."

Defending his record, the Minister accused the opposition of having a "petty political agenda". While he did not deny there were problems to be addressed, the Government was determined to do so in a structured and planned fashion. Ms McManus said that in June 1997, 30,453 patients were on public hospital waiting lists; by the following December, the number had jumped to 32,206.

In June of last year, there was another increase to 34,331, and in the following September, there was yet another rise to 35,405.

"In the 18 months of government, Fianna Fail and the PDs have succeeded in expanding the waiting lists by up to 5,000 people."

Ms McManus said pressure had built up in the A&E units, leading to extreme overcrowding. On Tallaght hospital, she said that "a Rolls Royce of a hospital is being forced to manage on a Morris Minor budget.

The Fine Gael spokesman on health, Mr Alan Shatter, supporting the Labour motion, said in the Ireland of the Celtic Tiger, "we have under this government an incompetent Minister for Health presiding over a dysfunctional department with a manana mentality." Debate on the motion continues tonight.