asked the Minister for Health if he will give an assurance that Roscommon County Hospital will be upgraded and that full surgical facilities will be available there in the future.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Roscommon County Hospital.
7.
As I stated in my reply to the Deputy's question of 19th January last, the question of the future status and staffing of this hospital is one for consideration in the context of the new organisational structure of the health services which now involves the Western Health Board, Comhairle na nOspidéal, the Galway Regional Hospital Board and the County Advisory Health Committee. As the Regional Hospital Board and Comhairle na nOspidéal have only recently been established it will be some time yet before they can formulate well founded views based on detailed study of the issues involved.
It would not, in the circumstances, be appropriate for me to make a definitive statement at this stage as to the future role of the hospital.
Would the Minister state whether it is the Cabinet's decision to upgrade this hospital? His colleague, the Minister for Transport and Power, stated before the last election, in the presence of the Taoiseach, that this hospital would be upgraded. Again, at a Fianna Fáil meeting in October in Roscommon he stated that it was to be upgraded.
The hospital is being upgraded by the provision of a short-stay psychiatric unit attached to the hospital. As psychiatric care is going to exceed probably in volume all other care in the next 20 years the Deputy can be satisfied with that.
Question No. 8.
The Minister must be joking. It is a surgical hospital that is required.
Is the Minister aware that when Deputy Seán Flanagan was Minister for Health he stated that the Government were accepting the Fitzgerald Report in principle? If so, is the Minister aware that this hospital will be downgraded in that area and that it will lose its surgical facilities? Would the Minister not be honest and tell the truth and not be trying to back up the promising young boy beside him who has been telling the electorate of Roscommon that it will not be downgraded?
I have given on many occasions to Deputies an exact description of the procedure to be followed. I will not take up Question Time by repeating everything I have said before.
I am calling Question No. 8.
Will it be retained as a major surgical hospital as it is now or not?
The people of Roscommon want to know whether they will have a surgical hospital or not.
(Interruptions.)
Will the Minister state whether this is in accord with the Fitzgerald proposals?
The Fitzgerald Report proposed some of the machinery for dealing with this matter. The proposals were slightly different in that the regional hospital boards were to have rather different functions, but the general proposals in relation to advisory bodies were in the Fitzgerald Report and the Fitzgerald Report recommended that there should be studies of this kind.
Is the Minister aware——
Question No. 8. We cannot debate this question all evening. Have Deputies any concern for the number of questions on the Order Paper?
——that the Minister for Transport and Power gave a different impression of the future of this hospital?
I am not going to help this House to have another debate on the Health Estimate when we have had prolonged debates in which I have given the fullest particulars of policy in relation to hospital development. Does the Deputy want me to read four pages from the Todd Report on future medical teaching practice, which quite clearly indicates that in eight years it will not be possible to appoint a surgeon to a hospital?
(Interruptions.)
Order. Question No. 8.
I am quite willing to read it——
Give it to the Minister for Transport and Power to read it.
You stick to rate collectors.
The Minister knows more about them than I do.
(Cavan): The Minister is the cause of the Bill.