I put down this motion because it needed serious consideration and immediate action. I had not given much thought to who might be taking the question from the Government side, but I am delighted to see Deputy Donnellan, the newly appointed Minister of State at the Department of Health, here tonight. He realises the seriousness of the problem. However, I am disappointed that the Minister, Deputy Desmond, is not here to hear my remarks on this most serious question.
This motion has nothing to do with the general motion by the Fianna Fáil Party. I want to make it quite clear that I am referring to the maternity unit and the general practices in the Regional Hospital Galway. I am a member of the health board. It is a most frustrating and difficult job to try to provide the services on the funds made available to the board, particularly this year, but although this is a serious situation there is an even more serious one.
About four years ago a contract for the extension of the maternity unit in the Regional Hospital Galway was completed. A beautiful new building costing approximately £4 million was erected. Part of that unit has been used to try to create some facilities for a hospital that is already overcrowded. The maternity wing is overcrowded for two reasons, first, the unit available to the community in Tuam closed and, second, the unit at the private hospital — Calvary Hospital — closed also. Immediately there was pressure on the maternity unit of the Galway Regional Hospital. The health board have asked for money to be made available so that staff can be appointed. From trainee nursing posts to senior posts, we need 75 staff appointed at an average wage of about £7,500 per annum. We have already bought some of the equipment and about £250,000 worth of extra equipment is needed, not all of it immediately but some of it quite urgently, to provide proper facilities at the hospital.
Three weeks ago last Friday, 70 expectant mothers arrived and were admitted to the already overcrowded hospital. That night there were at least five mothers in labour in the hospital corridors. This situation does not occur every day, but it has occurred more than once and is occurring more often as time goes on. The reason this is happening is that we have no other unit to serve the population of 125,000, with the exception of a small unit in Portiuncula Hospital which serves Offaly, Roscommon, and Westmeath and only a small portion of our county.
We have begged and beseeched the Minister to give us the money required to make this facility — which was built at enormous expense — available to the public, but we have been consistently refused. Dr. Donnelly, to whom I listened at health board meetings, said that the Regional Hospital is the second best acute hospital in these islands. He compared it to St. James's Hospital in Dublin. At the most recent health board meeting he gave the following figures which show the bias that exists against the west of Ireland. The Regional Hospital cost £19 million to run last year; St. James's Hospital in Dublin — comparable in size, capacity and throughput — cost the State £25 million. The admission rate to the Regional Hospital for an expenditure of £19 million was 21,000 patients; for £6 million more the admissions to St. James's Hospital were 14,000 patients. We were giving almost double the value for money spent. This year our expenditure was cut by £4.5 million while the Eastern Health Board's expenditure was cut by only £3 million. We have 70,000 outpatients in the region; the figure for the Eastern Health Board area is almost insignificant. Last Friday a senior official from the Department of Health came down and asked us if we could cut the services to outpatients. People may make up their own minds about that suggestion.
We have a cat-scanner in the Regional Hospital which cost £500,000. They have a cat-scanner in St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin. The Western Health Board asked for a staff of five to operate the cat-scanner. The request was refused; yet St. Vincent's Hospital have staff approval for seven. I do not begrudge them. That may be a decoy I do not understand but I do not see why a bias exists against us.
I make those comparisons because I want to point out clearly to this House and to the Minister of State present that the situation cannot and will not be tolerated in Galway. We cannot adjust any more to facilitate the Department of Health. I am beseeching the Minister of State — who happens to be a Deputy for that constituency — to take this matter in hand and to give a favourable and proper response to the needs of our county.
Fine Gael and Labour, are working together in Government at present and any issue arising on the eastern side of this country is not alone well pressed, but efforts are made to ensure that in the event of any abnormality arising the Ministers responsible, or some of them who assume responsibility, will even test the efforts of the national television network to make the case.
In recent weeks I heard the Minister who has responsibility for women in the Government, Deputy Fennell, on a programme talking about womanhood and motherhood. Would she tell the people of the west of Ireland and the people of County Galway in particular what she understands by womanhood and motherhood? Will she sit in a Government who refuse to give us the money and allow mothers to be in such a state on the corridors of our major hospital or could she twist the arm of the Taoiseach who might have a conversation with the Health Minister, Barry Desmond and ask him to release the money to us to stop this horrible performance? We are living in 1984 and this cannot be tolerated. There are important issues in this land but there is no issue as important as that. It is a serious situation in our county. No effort is being made by anybody in the administration in Dublin to come to our aid. Senator Michael Higgins knows exactly what I am talking about because he is a member of the board as well. I am sure he will concur with every word I say.
