BUDGET VOTES:TWO MORE TDs have said they will support the Government on all Budget votes after getting commitments on hospital developments in their region.
Sligo/North Leitrim Fianna Fáil TDs Jimmy Devins and Eamon Scanlon, who resigned the party whip last August, confirmed yesterday they will support the Government following an undertaking from the Taoiseach that work on a new €50 million development at Sligo General Hospital will begin next year.
The move follows similar declarations of support for the Government earlier this week by the Independent TD for Kerry South Jackie Healy-Rae after he said he had secured a new 40-bed hospital for Kenmare and the Independent TD for Tipperary North Michael Lowry after he said “contracts were signed on an investment programme for Nenagh General Hospital” on Monday.
A spokesman for Minister for Health Mary Harney said the projects they claim credit for were always in the pipeline.
But Dr Devins said he believed he and his colleague had secured “a wonderful deal” that would see the fast-tracking of the Sligo development while Mr Scanlon said it was “a good day for Sligo and the people of the northwest”.
The two TDs who resigned the whip in protest at the transfer of the breast cancer unit from Sligo hospital had been the source of much speculation in recent days given the Government’s narrow Dáil majority.
Dr Devins and Mr Scanlon indicated last evening that this did not mean they were back inside the fold of the parliamentary party.
Their announcement was greeted with derision by members of the Save Sligo Cancer Services group who said it was a “smokescreen” and an attempt to get the two TDs off the hook.
Killian McLoughlin, spokesman for the group, said it was insulting that Fianna Fáil expected the people of the northwest “to fall for a stunt like this”.
He said that what was being presented as a massive €50 million investment was in fact “the 90 per cent tax break the developer will get for building a carpark and bedrooms as an extension to Sligo General Hospital”.
Dr Devins said work at the planning and design stages should get under way as early as next February and he hoped the project would be completed within three years or so.
It is to be built by a public private partnership.
Referring to the continuing failure to provide a new bus for radiotherapy patients forced to travel to Galway on a 19-seater vehicle which the Minister for Health said should be replaced, Mr McLoughlin said: “While Jackie Healy Rae walks away with a new hospital, Devins and Scanlon couldn’t even get the long-promised bus”.
Meanwhile Ms Harney has said plans for the new Kenmare hospital were in the HSE capital plan for a number of years.