THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) has decided to delay the start of a €39 million redevelopment of Ennis General Hospital and will instead divert the cash to St Vincent's hospital in Dublin where planning permission has been granted for a new cystic fibrosis unit.
The Government had already allocated the money for the Ennis project, while Ennis Town Council has granted full planning permission. However, it is now believed that the HSE plans to further stall the Ennis project and use the cash for the new unit at St Vincent's.
Fianna Fáil councillors in Clare have called on the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minster for Health to intervene and direct the HSE to allocate the money, promised by the Government, to the project for which it was intended in Ennis.
Rumour has been rife in Clare in recent weeks about a further two to two and a half year delay in the start of the Ennis hospital redevelopment. This is the same timeframe which the HSE has given for the completion of the new 120-bed isolation unit at St Vincent's hospital. Planning permission was granted earlier this year for the new unit where the national centre for cystic fibrosis patients will be based.
Pending confirmation of when work on the Ennis redevelopment will start, Fianna Fáil councillors in Clare have expressed concern that the party will be wiped out in the next local elections which are a little over 12 months away.
Fianna Fáil councillor Richard Nagle said: "Any delay in upgrading the hospital in Ennis is totally unacceptable. This has been going on for quite a considerable length of time and we were guaranteed more than once that the upgrade would take place immediately.
"When the four mayors in Clare met the Minister for Health and the HSE, they were given same assurances that the money was ring-fenced for the Ennis project. People in Clare are heavily dependent on the hospital and it must be developed.
"The HSE should proceed with the development at Ennis without delay and any plan to divert the cash to any other project is not acceptable." In a letter last week to the Fianna Fáil general secretary Seán Dorgan, the secretary of the 15-strong group of Fianna Fáil councillors in Clare, Cllr Pat Daly said: "Unless the development of the hospital takes place, the local Fianna Fáil councillors will be wiped out".
"For the past two years, the HSE have been playing around with planning briefs and designs for the upgrade of the hospital. It went to the planning stage with Ennis Town Council and in 2007 full planning permission was acquired," the document stated.
While not confirming or denying plans to divert cash from Ennis to Dublin, the HSE has said: "When the other acute priorities, which have no contractual commitments, are taken into account, namely the National Paediatric Hospital, St Vincent's Phase 2, Minor Capital and Modernisation, there are some projects which will have to be delayed for a year or so, or may have to be put on hold unless additional funding can be identified or they can be substituted for another project in the plan.
"In the context of the capital funding available this year, existing contractual commitments, competing national priorities and cash flow projections, the Ennis project is one such project."