Sherlock heckled at Mallow protest
For Sean Sherlock TD yesterday was a far cry from the adulation he received in his hometown only a few months ago when he topped the General Election poll in the Cork East constituency.
Instead he had to face an angry crowd outside Mallow GAA Club, but faced them down with assurances that ‘’nothing was written in stone’’ and his aim was to ensure the hospital had all the modern facilities possible to cater for the 100,000 population in its catchment area.
A number of the protestors were from the Sinn Féin Party, who had some hours earlier staged a demonstration outside the entrance to the hospital.
They were joined by some concerned citizens who claimed they didn’t belong to the party and also by some patients who left their wards to vent their anger at the proposal to replace the emergency department (ED) with an out-of-hours medical assessment unit and an urgent care unit.
Joe Crowley, a 54-year-old father of six from Mitchelstown who was admitted to the hospital last week with a stomach problem, maintained lives would be lost if the 24-hour emergency cover was axed.
“The care I’m getting here is second to none. Lord have mercy, but if Joe Sherlock (Sean Sherlock’s late father) was around today this wouldn’t be closing. We need to get the people out on the streets to protest against this before it is too late,” Mr Crowley said.
SF TD Sandra McLellan, who led the protest, maintained that the extra mileage involved in travelling to Cork would cost lives.
“Dr James Reilly has to reverse this decision,” she said, while her local town councillor, Willie O’Regan, added that “international best practice doesn’t allow the closure of emergency departments.’’
Mr Sherlock maintained that while there were issues with HIQA over the future licensing of the hospital and there were proposals to cut the emergency department cover, nothing had been decided.
He added that a meeting scheduled for next week between senior HSE (South) officials and the hospital’s consultants would shed more light on the outcome.
The deputy added that emergency cases would still be handled by the hospital, through GP referrals, even if they were at night.
He also said that while Mallow General Hospital had an emergency department it could never be compared to the expertise on offer at Cork University Hospital.
The junior minister said that in the cases of serious trauma, road accidents victims were always taken to CUH for treatment and added that heart attack victims were also taken there after first being stabilised in Mallow.
He said that in both scenarios that would continue to be the case.
