The Mayor of Clare has described the HIQA report into services at Ennis General Hospital as a cynical attempt by the Minister for Health to justify the downgrading of the facility.
Councillor Madeleine Taylor Quinn said that the deaths of cancer victims Anne Moriarty and Edel Kelly had been cynically used as an excuse to commission a report that justified Minister Mary Harney’s decision and that of the HSE to further downgrade Ennis General Hospital. The Mayor said the people of County Clare had now been placed in a chronic situation whereby the closure of acute services at Ennis was effectively being recommended despite the clear lack of additional services, staffing and equipment at Limerick Regional Hospital.
“The health of thousands of people in County Clare is being put at risk to enable the HSE and Government to implement an experimental health system, namely the larger centre of care in Limerick. Rather than vindicate the closure of acute services at Ennis, the Government and HSE should now use the report findings as a blueprint for future investment in the hospital”, she stated.
The former T.D. and Senator said that elements of the report were “farcical”. “This report states that Ennis General Hospital does not provide adequate maternity and paediatric services. To consider that the Minister for Health commissioned a report that has come to such a conclusion is a disgrace considering there has been no child born in this county since the early 1980s. Clare women must travel to Galway or Limerick to avail of such maternity services”, commented Councillor Taylor Quinn.
She added, “Furthermore, the reports emphasises that the throughput of patients is not sufficient enough to merit the retention of acute surgical services. Part of the reason for that is because the HSE removed 40 beds from Ennis General Hospital in 1988. Since then, the HSE has been consistently and persistently downgrading the hospital.”
“Patient safety issues are at the forefront of the HIQA report’s conclusions but it must be remembered that all Ennis General Hospital Consultants wrote to the Minister in 2005 to express their concerns in relation to such issues, which they blamed on the lack of HSE investment. That plea was ignored by the Minister and the HSE who are now using the HIQA report to validate their decision to implement the Teamwork and Hanley reports, which both advocate the removal of acute services from Ennis General Hospital”, said Mayor Taylor Quinn.
“Currently, Clare GPS have been instructed by the HSE that they are not to refer women to the breast clinic in Limerick unless they are manifesting the symptoms of cancer. Therefore, where do the women of Clare now go to benefit from essential breast cancer treatment if Ennis is as unsafe as the HIQ reports states? The bottom line is that Clare is now without breast screening services and is served only by a diagnostic service”, she concluded.
