Roscommon Hospital - FG should have known better

Everybody knew that things were going to have to change economically in the current crisis and it was dishonest of any politicians to pretend otherwise. The issue has always been where to make the changes.

As Fine Gael leader during the last general election, Enda Kenny promised to preserve the A&E department at Roscommon Hospital. While campaigning in Roscommon in February he asked voters to elect Denis Naughten and Frank Feighan to the Dáil in order to protect the hospital from “bureaucratic people in a room far away from here”.

The people elected both of them. Mr Naughten voted against the Government this week over the Roscommon Hospital issue. He is now being criticised for backing himself into a corner in threatening to vote against the Government if the A&E services were withdrawn. Are those critics suggesting Mr Naughten should have been more astute by not making the commitment while running for election, or do they believe he should just have done the usual political thing and performed a U-turn and announced he was doing so strictly in the public interest? Such behaviour has promoted considerable disillusionment with politicians.

Mr Naughten’s behaviour has highlighted the stand taken by Enda Kenny during the general election campaign. He is now trying to dismiss the questioning of his promises as “pathetic”.

Fine Gael spokespeople claim promises in relation to smaller hospitals were made before the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) published its report raising serious public safety issues about the retention of A&E facilities at Roscommon Hospital, which was dealing with only 1,300 cases a year. This figure was not sufficient to justify the investment needed to safeguard the necessary specialist care, according to HIQA.

This raises the old issue of whether the best quality care is centralised or local. Professionals contend that centralisation improves the skills of medical staff. They are more capable of dealing with problems they treat regularly, rather than something they rarely encounter.

Centralisation also allows them to call on other professionals with different skills. A properly functioning A&E requires round-the-clock access to people with the proper diagnostic and surgical skills, along with full laboratory back-up. The limited service available in Roscommon Hospital was not sufficient to provide proper A&E treatment, according to HIQA. It suggested that Roscommon and nine of the other 33 A&Es around the country were unsafe, but this was known before the last general election.

The whole controversy has degenerated into a political game. The opposition is playing politics, but then Enda Kenny and Health Minister James Reilly should have known better when they played politics with the issue during the general election campaign.