I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue on behalf of my constituents and to protest at the continuing downgrading of services at Louth County Hospital. Since the Dundalk catchment area is one of the fastest-growing urban centres in the country, health services in it should be expanded. The increasing numbers of people living in Dundalk and the north Louth area generally, like all citizens of this State, deserve the best possible health care services. Access to health care is a fundamental human right, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Government has a responsibility to deliver those services and the Minister is obliged to ensure their delivery. Yet the actions of the Government and its agents, the North-Eastern Health Board, have left the people of the Dundalk catchment area without any proper health care services.
Cutbacks, which have been made for purely financial reasons, deny people the essential health services to which they are entitled. Louth County Hospital once had an excellent paediatric unit, a fine maternity unit and a first-class gynaecology unit, all of which are now closed. It appears that the accident and emergency unit is to face the same grim future. Now all minor and major road traffic accidents are sent to the already overcrowded accident and emergency unit at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. There are major concerns for the future of accident and emergency services at the Louth hospital because of the failure to appoint a consultant.
Does the Minister think it acceptable that trauma cases now have to travel an extra half hour to Drogheda? He must realise that the extra time involved significantly increases the risk in life-and-death situations. Can he stand by that? Can he explain to me the status of the accident and emergency unit at Louth County Hospital? Can he confirm if it is true that, from January 2003, the unit will close at 5 p.m. on weekdays and over the entire weekend? If that is the case, it will not be viable to have anaesthetists on call, meaning that the hospital's surgical unit will not survive. It is scandalous that services for women and children at Louth County Hospital were the first to be cut.
The absence of adequate maternity services is reprehensible since maternity and major gynaecological services transferred to Drogheda, I have continually been approached by expectant mothers who are both annoyed and frightened by the prospect of travelling so far when they go into labour. At the back of their minds, no doubt, is the tragic case of a young Monaghan mother whose baby died en route to hospital in a similar situation where a community had been deprived of maternity services. The people of Dundalk were promised a midwife-led unit. In June I inquired of the Minister when that unit would be functional and what capacity it would have. I was informed that the building identified for future use as a midwife-led unit would require some modification and extension, that a suitable scheme would be prepared for consideration and that the work should be completed in 2004 – this is the critical point – subject to funding being made available.
Will the Minister for Health and Children assure me that that funding has been made available? We simply cannot wait any longer. I was further told that only two beds would be made available to the midwife-led unit from the existing bed compliment at the hospital. That last sentence demonstrates the misleading nature of the whole midwife-led scheme. From the outset, it was planned that there would be only two beds and that they would come from the existing bed compliment. That is madness.
The situation is critical. A whole community is being deprived of essential services. The Minister must intervene immediately and there must be no more passing the buck to consultants and health boards. There must be no further downgrading of Louth County Hospital. All essential services must be restored to the hospital without delay.
