IT WAS never envisaged that funding for the planned new hospital for the northeast region would come out of the National Development Plan (NDP), the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said yesterday.
She said the new hospital, which outside consultants have recommended be built in Navan, was a longer-term project. The current NDP covers projects planned between 2007 and 2013.
Ms Harney was responding to comments made by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, last Friday when he said there was not "a red cent in the exchequer" to pay for the proposed new hospital after it emerged it would not be built in his Louth constituency.
Ms Harney said she would not comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of Mr Ahern's remarks. However, she said Mr Ahern was a deputy for Louth and "clearly there was disappointment in Louth that the site identified was not in Co Louth".
She added: "I think we are obsessed in Ireland with where hospitals are. What's far more important is what happens in the hospitals, and certainly from a patient-safety point of view the priority over the next number of years is to make sure right around the country that our acute services are organised in such a way that patient-safety is paramount."
She said the recommendation that the new hospital be built in Navan was recommended by outside consultants and had not yet been endorsed by the HSE or the Government. In the meantime there would have to be capital investment in existing hospitals in the northeast to make sure they can deal with patient-safety and capacity issues.
The plan is to centralise more services in Cavan and Drogheda while the new hospital is awaited.
The decision to build a new hospital in the northeast, which already has five hospitals - Navan, Cavan, Monaghan, Dundalk and Drogheda - was made by the HSE in June 2006.
This followed the publication of an independent review of acute hospital services in the region.