Action committee forms to defend Macroom hospital from closure threat

An action committee has been set up to “safeguard and protect” a community hospital in mid-Cork.

With hundreds of beds to be lost countrywide in the near future, a public meeting in Macroom was told that the retention of district hospitals “would be a case of whichever community stands up the strongest” to the HSE and the Government.

Des O’Grady told the meeting: “History should tell us that where small hospitals are concerned, nothing happens until it happens, and when it happens, it is the worst news.”

Urging the community to stand behind Macroom hospital, he referred to the example of people in Abbeyleix, Co Laois. “If the HSE does not put funding into Macroom hospital, it won’t reach the standards.”

He warned the closure may not be played out in the short term but instead could take a number of years.

Around 400 people attended the public meeting in Macroom’s Castle Hotel, where a decision was taken to form an action committee to help secure the hospital’s future. A public petition to keep the hospital open was also initiated.

Community hospitals with fewer than 50 beds are most at risk of closure, and Macroom remains within that category. Concerns first arose after the out-of-hours GP service SouthDoc was recently relocated from the hospital campus.

The hospital underwent refurbishment in recent years and facilities such as lifts were installed.

It serves an area extending from Ballyvourney to Ovens and was described as being “pivotal to Macroom and the surrounding areas”. A number of people said it was important to ensure elderly patients would be facilitated in the area in which they had lived most of their lives.

An emergency meeting of Macroom Town Council had taken place on the issue last week and the matter was also raised before Cork County Council this week.

Padraig Dineen said he was “appalled at closure even being a possibility”.

Others at the meeting said the closure of beds and removal of the elderly was referred to as “eviction” and “morally wrong”.

County councillors demanded people make a stand before beds and hospital cuts were announced.

Macroom mayor Tom Counihan, who was born in the hospital in 1949, pledged the support of the council.

Fine Gael TD Michael Creed, however, advised that assurances were given to union representatives that no district hospital was facing closure under the HSE plan for 2012.

He said there were challenges and that while health watchdog HIQA gave a glowing tribute of all staff at the hospital, they were conscious of structural issues in a 1930s building.