Man overboard! But Taoiseach ‘hangs tough’ on no more money for health

Date Published: {J}

The Government TDs out in Galway East – Paul Connaughton and Ciaran Cannon (FG) and Labour’s Colm Keaveney – must be glad that those written assurances about the future of Portiuncula Hospital are floating about out there, in light of the drama of the past week.

Now up in Roscommon they would say ‘put not your trust in assurances,’ but the issue of Portiuncula Hospital’s future has not even arisen, it is not one of the ten mentioned as for review of services, and the fact that Accident and Emergency in Roscommon is gone, has made Portiuncula central to services in the adjacent districts.

Those letters assuring Portiuncula’s future, written by Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Health Minister Dr James Reilly, are, most importantly, backed-up by the fact that capital and staffing investment in Portiuncula have been kept up during the past few years. In fairness a lot of the pressure due to local TDs who were there over those key years … Paul Connaughton, Ulick Burke, Noel Treacy, and Michael Kitt, the first three of them now retired, the present four sitting Deputies, and activists locally in the hospital action committee.

The investment of capital and staffing money has meant that no one can come along and say ‘gee, I’d love to keep those promises but we have been told by HIQA (The Health and Safety Authority) that it would be unsafe for patients.’ That’s essentially what happened in the past week when Enda Kenny and James Reilly came under pressure on Roscommon.

It was all too much for Roscommon FG Dail Deputy Denis Naughton. Roscommon can now only handle cases such as suspected broken bones from knees to toes, suspected broken bones in arms from collar bones to finger tips, all sprains and strains, injuries to the face, minor burns and scalds, wounds bites and cuts, splinters, foreign bodies in eyes, ears and nose, minor chest injuries.

What Roscommon cannot handle now is – injuries following a fall from any height or from a road traffic accident, head injuries, chest pain, abdominal pain, neck and back injuries, pregnancy related conditions, alcohol/drug related problems, pelvis and hip injuries.

At the weekend in Galway Taoiseach Enda Kenny was not promising any soft options – even though it meant he had to miss the Connacht Final.

Oh I know there was all that guff about having to visit the children in the Gaeltacht, but why do I have the suspicion that, if Ming ‘The Merciless’ TD from Roscommon and the merciless Hospital Action Committee had not threatened in advance they’d be in Hyde Park, then Kenny would have been on the sideline as Taoiseach at a Connacht Final to cheer on his beloved Mayo.

It is a fair indication of the medicine to come that Fine Gael were prepared to lose Denis Naughten TD and that, even in the light of that loss, when Enda Kenny came to Galway on Friday, the only real few moments of relaxation he had was a few jars with the likes of TDs Brian Walsh and Sean Kyne, former Mayor Johnny Mulholland and Councillor Padraig Conneely.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.