Madam, – I am amazed at the decision of Jim Devins and Eamon Scanlon to resign the whip of Fianna Fáil (Front page, August 6th). To say the horse has bolted is an understatement. Both TDs had ample opportunity over the past 12 to 18 months to take this action and place themselves in a position to vote in the Dáil against the closure of the cancer unit in Sligo. I wonder what their voting patterns will be in future Dáil votes? Will they vote extensively against the Government? History indicates this will not happen.
It is also noted that the decision to resign has been made during the holiday period from the Dáil. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Fianna Fáil TDs in Sligo have obviously learned a lesson from their county council counterparts. If you happen to be a sitting Fianna Fáil deputy who is nervous about re-election, just resign the party whip, stand as an Independent and the voters might even believe you. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – So Fianna Fáil has decided to play the Independents game. Expect a staged series of “principled” resignations as Government TDs nobly defend “County Sideways” from the “Dublin 4 cuts”.
Come the election (soon, please!), the defectors will run as Independents wherever there is a risk of Fine Gael gaining a seat, in the hope of blocking a government strong enough to confront Brian Cowen’s crisis.
Then, of course, the Real Fianna Fáilers will return via the Beverley Flynn revolving door. There might even be enough naive Flat-Earth deputies in the next Dáil to cobble together yet another ramshackle, divine-right coalition. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those voters are now Fianna Fáil’s target group. Who’s next off the sinking ship? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – It beggars belief what is happening to our breast services in Sligo. I recently discussed the situation with a very eminent surgeon in Oxford. I was assured that all major hospitals in England supply an excellent service for breast cancer. The concept of “centres of excellence” applies there only to breast reconstruction.
The new national breast clinic referral form here lists all the hospitals involved. It names hospitals in Dublin, then Waterford Cork, Limerick, Galway and Letterkenny hospital – denoted as a satellite centre. The gateway city of Sligo has been bypassed.
Fifty-five years ago when I started in practice, Sligo boasted four consultants. Now, there are more than 50 working there. It has gone from strength to strength, with an excellent breast surgeon, two oncologists, a histo-pathologist and top of the range diagnostic services, with radiological equipment and laboratory facilities second to none.
The hospital boasts a research and education foundation, with facilities for teleconferences, and this includes top-class second and third opinions on mammograms as part of the breast service and angiograms as part of cardiovascular investigations.
I have been a patient in Sligo General Hospital as recently as one year ago.The kindness and attention of all the staff – this includes nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and domestic staff – was excellent. Only when one is ill does one realise what a difference this makes.
Having spent the past 55 years working in general practice in Sligo, I find it hard to understand why this great hospital is being downgraded.
Apart from the breast services, the stroke unit concept has been abandoned with patients scattered throughout the hospital. The orthopaedic beds have been halved, and there is talk of reducing ENT and ophthalmic beds. If this continues, Sligo General will end up as a step-down facility.
At present, we have some of the best consultants in the country. We have also an acute assessment unit which deals with immediate care for all acute medical and surgical problems. We have a separate accident and emergency department which can deal with acute cardiac and trauma cases.
The great fear is that if this downgrading of our hospital continues, it will be difficult to attract the best of consultants and junior doctors. We would be in danger of losing medical and nursing staff currently working here.
We have only to see how services have been stripped in Monaghan hospital to realise that Sligo hospital may follow suit if we allow it to happen.
I realise that the purpose of bringing Prof Tom Keane (head of the National Cancer Control Programme) to Ireland was to establish eight centres of excellence for patients with breast problems.
This differs from the original concept in Prof Niall O’Higgins’s group report. (In his March 2000 report he recommended the 20 hospitals which then provided breast cancer services be reduced to 13). I would urge that the bigger picture is looked at before irreparable damage is done to our hospital. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Unfortunately I think we all know the decision to remove the breast cancer service in Sligo is unlikely to be reversed – the letter from five Sligo doctors (July 31st) highlights the fact that some patients will have to make a 300km round trip to access services. Making this round trip will involve an arduous journey on the N17 to Galway, either by private car or public transport, probably getting held up at Claregalway for an hour at peak times.
Our Government lacks the vision of integrated thinking. Had the closure of our cancer services in Sligo been coupled with a promise that the upgrading of the N17, part of the Atlantic corridor in the Transport 21 programme, would be fast-tracked and completed as a seamless dual carriageway, the road journey from Sligo to Galway, of about 120km, could be completed in a comfortable 90 minutes. I imagine any patient attending one of the bigger Dublin hospitals travelling from anywhere in the greater Dublin region would allow a similar time to get to appointments. We live in a small country. The travel time to critical facilities – not the distance to travel – is the key issue.
If Ministers Mary Harney and Noel Dempsey had their thinking caps on and worked as a team they could have made the closure of our cancer services in Sligo less of a pain to bear. – Yours, etc,