Mid-west A&E units face closure threat

ACCIDENT and emergency units at three hospitals in the mid-west are being threatened with closure.

It is understood A&E departments at Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s voluntary hospital in Limerick will be replaced with nurse-led minor injuries units.

The hospitals are the three likely casualties in a national review of A&E departments being prepared by a team of consultants for the Health Service Executive (HSE).

The disclosure comes just months after a leaked HSE report revealed that A&E units in the north-east are to close.

A&E services in Monaghan will end sometime next year, with Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan losing its emergency unit in 2009.

These hospitals are expected to become ambulatory hospitals from where people will be brought by ambulance to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and Cavan General Hospital, until a new regional hospital becomes operational in 2012.

A new report, expected to be completed by the Teamwork consultative team in the next few weeks, is expected to recommend that A&E services at Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s be transferred to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.

It is not clear, however, whether the minor injuries units at the respective hospitals will remain open on a 24-hour basis.

A HSE spokesperson said the report on hospital services in the mid-west was expected in the early autumn — at the earliest.

And, she said, as work on the report was still continuing the health authority was not in a position to comment on the matter.

Fine Gael’s Pat Breen, warned lives would be at risk if Ennis Hospital had its A&E replaced by a 12-hour nurse-led injury clinic.

The Clare deputy urged Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Clare-based government TDs to live up to their pre-election promise to retain A&E services in Ennis.

“Shred this report and continue with the job of improving and extending 24-hour A&E services at Ennis Hospital, otherwise people will die,” he said.

Spokesperson for the Ennis General Hospital Development Committee, Cllr Brian Meaney, said the closure of the hospital’s A&E unit would be strongly resisted.

“We will fight this, and if it means marching on the Dáil we will, but we also have a number of imaginative civil disobedience protests that we could mount,” he warned.