40 hospital beds idle in Galway

Date Published: 12-Jul-2007

A Galway TD has accused Minister for Health Mary Harney of ‘playing the three card trick’ with claims that providing private hospitals on the grounds of public hospitals would provide beds quickly for patients now having to wait on trolleys — he said there were forty beds in Galway which were not opened simply because the Minister would not
provide staffing for them.

Fine Gael Deputy Padraic McCormack said that between University Hospital, Galway, and its sister hospital in Galway, Merlin Park, there had been beds closed for years, but that every time he asked a question about them, he was told that the wards in question were
undergoing some kind of improvement or refurbishment, but never in more than five years had all beds been open at the same time.

Deputy McCormack was reacting to the news that Galway had not been selected as one of the sites for co-location of public and private hospitals on the same hospital campus.

Galway was not chosen for such a co-location project, but Deputy Padraic McCormack said the Harney policy was ‘just a con on the ordinary taxpayers.’ It was like ‘the three card trick at Galway Races,’…….