The Health Services Action Group is to field up to 15 candidates in the next general election, write Eithne Donnellan and Mark Hennessy.
The group, set up to lobby against recommendations in the Hanly report, includes representatives from action groups across the State who believe their hospitals could lose accident and emergency and other key services to larger hospitals if the report is implemented.
The areas affected which may field candidates include Ennis, Nenagh, Roscommon, Ballinasloe, Mallow, Portlaoise, Monaghan, Athlone, Mullingar and South Dublin.
The group's chairman, Mr Peadar McMahon, confirmed yesterday that "every hospital area, under threat from the Hanly reforms, would have a hospital candidate in the next general election".
The decision had been taken now to give the group ample time to select candidates for the election, he said. "We are considering the optimum areas to put candidates forward. Up to 15 areas are being considered," he said.
Whether all hospital candidates would have to be independents has yet to be decided, but Mr McMahon said he didn't believe they would have to be. This leaves the way open for Opposition politicians to run under the "anti-Hanly" umbrella.
The decision to run Dáil candidates will cause concern to Fianna Fáil, but it could also hurt Fine Gael's chances of forming a Rainbow administration with Labour and the Greens. The move could help to prop up the campaigns of a number of serving Independent TDs, several of whose seats will be targeted by the major parties.
In particular, a co-ordinated ticket could help Independent TD, Mr James Breen in Clare, Mr Paudge Connolly in Cavan/Monaghan and Mr Paddy McHugh in Galway East.
However, Mr McMahon's willingness to accept Opposition party candidates as standard bearers for the group could make it difficult for the group to create a cohesive political image between now and the election.
The Minister for Health, Ms Harney, has insisted that no local hospital services would be lost until better facilities are made available in regional centres. Little work has been done on implementing the Hanly report because of industrial action by hospital consultants over a new insurance scheme.
However, Mr McMahon said communities were still worried about the report being implemented. "From statements coming from the new Minister for Health, it's obvious the Hanly reforms are the only game on the table. We are totally convinced the Hanly reforms will not solve the problems...Therefore we need people in Dáil Éireann to put our point of view across," he said.
The recent death of Monaghan man Mr Benny McCullagh in an ambulance on the way to Cavan Hospital consolidated in the minds of the group what would happen in other situations where services were taken from smaller hospitals, he said. Mr McCullagh died after he suffered a heart attack at his home a short distance from Monaghan Hospital but couldn't be taken there because it was "off call".