Businesses protest hospital closure

A DEPARTMENT store owner who led a cavalcade of around 100 commercial trucks, vans and lorries to Dublin yesterday to protest over the future of Monaghan General Hospital warned that the local business community will be making their vote count in the general election.

Gordon Fleming, managing director of Fleming’s Department Store in Monaghan, said that the convoy that travelled from Monaghan and converged in the streets around Leinster House represented around 5,000 votes that would be used to ensure the restoration of the services at the beleaguered hospital.

Chairman of the Monaghan Hospital Community Alliance pressure group, Peadar McMahon, said the group had not ruled out the possibility of putting up their own candidate in the Cavan/Monaghan constituency.