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.

Mr Fleming said the convoy was organised by the business community to demonstrate their support for the campaign and had no doubt that their vote would be very important to any candidate in the election.

Both the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Health Minister Mary Harney, have refused to yield to the protestor’s demands, claiming patient safety prevents them.

Mr Fleming, however, did not accept the position taken by both the health authority and the minister.

“If I do not provide what my customers want, I go out of business. If the Department of Health do not provide what the voters want, they should also go out of business,” he said.

Mr McMahon handed in a Valentine’s Day card to Ms Harney on which “Monaghan begs you to have a heart” was written.

But, he pointed out, there were no chocolates or flowers to go with the small card with the big message. “If she (Ms Harney) has a heart and shows us that she has a heart, then God knows what we will give her — something nice,” he said.

Mr McMahon said the campaign group had invited Ms Harney to meet them on numerous occasions since she became minister but, on each occasion had been told that her diary was too full.

Mr McMahon pointed out that the business community in Monaghan had been hugely supportive of the campaign since it started five years ago.

The HSE said yesterday they wanted to make it clear to everyone living in Monaghan and the north east that the authority was going provide the most modern, integrated, safe, patient focussed service that has ever been devised in the country.