3,000 protest at planned AE cutbacks

THERE WILL be chaos when the HSE plan to end 24-hour AE services at Ennis and Nenagh General Hospitals is introduced from next Monday, according to Clare GP Dr Michael Harty.

Dr Harty addressed a crowd of 3,000 at O’Connell Square in Ennis on Saturday afternoon to protest at the HSE plan.

The crowd was significantly less than the 15,000 that turned out to march in Ennis in November 2003 when proposals to downgrade AE services were first unveiled in the Hanly report.

Clare’s two Fianna Fáil TDs, Tony Killeen and Timmy Dooley, did not attend Saturday’s rally.

However, Mr Dooley said: “I support the reconfiguration of services that will increase the chance of patients’ survival, so it would be a crazy thing to do to join in the march which is diametrically opposed to the reconfiguration.”

In his address, the chairman of the Clare branch of the Irish College of General Practitioners, Dr Harty, said that “what is being proposed by the HSE is to cut safety to the bone”.

He said: “Over the years, Ennis and Nenagh have been systematically downgraded and undermined by the failure to develop the hospital. The development at Ennis general has been promised so many times and still not been delivered that it has attained the status of a fairy tale with a very bad ending.”

After 24-hour AE services are withdrawn next week, the HSE plans to withdraw acute surgical services in July.

Dr Harty said: “The closure of casualty and surgery is the start of the long goodbye for Ennis as an acute hospital. We don’t believe that Limerick Regional Hospital has the capacity to cope with the extra workload. Last Monday, there were 18 patients on trolleys in Limerick and yesterday 17 patients on trolleys. How many more will there be when the 24-hour services are closed in Ennis and Nenagh?”

Dr Harty added: “There is clear evidence that Limerick is completely unprepared to cope with the transformation process in terms of bed numbers, staff and resources.”

Consultant geriatrician at Nenagh general Dr Christine O’Malley told the protesters that Ennis and Nenagh hospitals will be reduced to nursing homes and clinics through the HSE proposals next year. Dr O’Malley said that from next Monday, the HSE “is going to lock” Ennis hospital by night. She said that the public has been deliberately deceived by the HSE, pointing out that the real night-time attendance of patients at Ennis hospital is 5,500 and at Nenagh hospital 4,000.

Dr O’Malley said: “I know it is not going to work, it can’t work. They haven’t got the ambulances, they don’t have the beds in Limerick. They are going to take your doctors away and leave nothing behind here and they don’t want you in Limerick. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say to you. It can’t work, it is not going to work, they are going to do it anyway.”