Patients ‘don’t have political clout of road lobby’

THE Government’s ability to spend billions of euro on improving the country’s road network contrasts sharply with its inability to provide 3,000 additional acute hospital beds, the head of the Irish Nurses Organisation declared yesterday.

INO general secretary, Liam Doran, said the Government lacked the political will to ensure it provided all of the additional beds by 2008.

"It's the Government's agreed figure of what is required but we have to keep on fighting the same battle because the political will just isn't there," he said.

He pointed out that Letterkenny Hospital in Co Donegal, one of the hospitals hardest hit by overcrowding, only received four new beds in the last 10 years.

Nurses at the hospital, who staged a lunchtime protest yesterday, said a minimum of 70 additional beds were needed to cater for the local population.

While an extension to the A&E department promised by former Health Minister, Micheál Martin, two years ago, is slowly progressing, it will only increase the number of beds by 10.

Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney told INO officials last Friday that an additional 800 hospital beds would be available by the year end.

But Mr Doran pointed out that the Government would still be 2,200 short of its target outlined in the 2001 health strategy and urged her to produce a five-year plan that would guarantee funding for the extra beds.

He pointed out that the argument that was being made for Letterkenny Hospital could also be made for other regional hospitals in Wexford, Cavan, Drogheda, Roscommon and Limerick.

"This is a by-product of the internal row between the Department of Finance and the Department of Health that has gone on for the last three years," he said.

"The people who are suffering don't seem to have the same political clout as the organisations who are calling for the new road networks. That's what it comes down to a question of political choice," he said.

It was also deeply disturbing, he said, that Finance Minister Brian Cowen was suggesting cutbacks in health to meet the cost of reimbursing people charged for nursing home care.

"Why do we have to keep on fighting to get the Government to acknowledge the extent of the problem and why do we have to keep on waiting for someone to do something about it," he said.