I publicly inform the Minister of State that the owners of the Bon Secours Hospital, Tuam, County Galway have decided to close down the hospital from 6 April next. Unfortunately for the staff and the other workers, they got their redundancy notices this morning and letters of closure for that date. This means that after a long period stretching back over decades, there will now not be a hospital in Tuam.
As the Minister of State knows, the Western Health Board had originally suggested an extension to Áras Mhuire, part of which would provide a more confined range of hospital facilities. At the best of times, this would not meet the requirements of the huge population around Tuam and its hinterland but when the news broke that the land needed for such an extension is not now available, this project is a non-runner.
The case for a community type hospital for Tuam and its environs extending over a 15 mile radius from Tuam to north Galway and south Mayo is well documented. More than 30,000 people will be directly affected by this closure and, to put it bluntly, neither they nor I will stand for it.
As the Minister of State is aware, the University College Hospital Galway is literally packed to the doors. There has to be a place in the hospital system for the delivery of services in a community type hospital in a town that will grow from its present population of 6,000 to 7,000 to 15,000 within the next ten years.
I raise this matter this evening because I want the Minister of State, on behalf of the senior Minister and the Government, and in conjunction with the Western Health Board, to declare his intentions in so far as this hospital is concerned. The present Bon Secours site is the proper place to locate the community type hospital facility. We now want a Government commitment that this facility will not alone be retained in Tuam but expanded. We do not want a situation to develop on the morning after 6 April, when the padlocks go on the gates for the last time. It would be much easier for the Western Health Board and the Minister's Department to engage in discussions.
On behalf of the 30,000 people who want this hospital, who have attended public meetings and who have shown great anxiety, I want the Minister of State to give an undertaking this evening in regard to what his Department intends to do. The Minister and his senior Minister have met the local communities many times and the case is now well documented. What we did not know until today was the exact date the owners intended to close down the hospital. We now know that and we understand that it will now take serious negotiations, first of all on behalf of the Western Health Board, but at the end of the day this is about money. As far as we are concerned in that part of north Galway, health care for the future of our people is as important as the health care for people anywhere else. It is against that background and on their behalf that I ask the Minister what he intends to do about the Bon Secours Hospital in Tuam.
