‘Patients will be sent abroad unless epilepsy units open’

One of the country’s foremost experts on epilepsy has warned he is unable to look after his patients properly, and will be forced to send them abroad for treatment unless two units needed to monitor seizures are opened.

Consultant neurologist and director of the epilepsy programme at Beaumont Hospital, Professor Norman Delanty, said it was unacceptable that close to 200 patients, some of whom are at risk of death, are unable to access a vital service.

This is because the HSE ban on recruitment means a new two-bed unit at Cork University Hospital, and a four-bed unit at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital, re-furbished at a cost of almost €1m, cannot be staffed.