Parents protest over cuts at Crumlin

ANGRY parents have staged a protest in the headquarters of the Health Service Executive in Dublin against cutbacks in the country’s largest children’s hospital.

Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, plans to close wards and theatres and reduce out-patient appointments by 15% in a bid to reduce its deficit of €9.6 million before the end of the year.

Members of the Save Our Lady’s Hospital in Crumlin campaign group entered the National Hospital Office at Dr Steeven’s Hospital, Kilmainham, yesterday handing in a petition with 1,000 signatures to a HSE official and demanding funds be provided to allow the hospital operate at current levels.

Earlier, Health Minister Mary Harney said the three children’s hospitals in Dublin would have to work together to avoid duplication and save money.

One of the protesters, Teresa Shallow, of Walkinstown in Dublin, questioned how the hospitals could pull together if the resources were not being provided.

“Money is being ripped from education and the hospitals and it is the most vulnerable, our children, who are suffering,” she said.

She said all of her children had been patients at Crumlin. Her son Noel, 17, had open heart surgery when he four years old. She had two teenage daughters, Louise, 13, and Jessica, 14, who had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and were accident prone. Chantal, 11, has Osgood-Schlatter disease, an overuse injury that occurs in the knee area of growing adolescents.

Ms Harney said the new consultant contracts requires the three Dublin children’s hospitals to have a single clinical director and she believed the appointment, which was imminent, would make a huge difference to the provision of services.

Asked how the appointment would stop wards being closed and waiting lists increasing at Crumlin in the short term, Ms Harney said it could only be stopped by hospitals working together.

“It is not effective from a children’s service point of view to have three accident and emergency departments, with all that goes with that, with staff on call, open after midnight in this city to deal with a very small number of patients in straitened financial times.”