THE CHIEF executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE), Prof Brendan Drumm, has ruled out extra funding for the Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork, and said the hospital must use its existing budget to fund the opening of a new €4.7 million emergency department which has remained idle for more than a year.
Prof Drumm said the question of opening the new emergency department at the MUH, which was completed in March 2007, was a matter for the management of Mercy University Hospital, as they had already received their HSE funding for 2008 and it was up to them to allocate it appropriately.
"I give money each year to voluntary hospitals up and down the country - it's really up to them to decide how they provide a service for the people of Cork. It's an issue for the hospital and there has to be some accountability in terms of what the Mercy itself decides to do.
"It's not up to my jurisdiction as to whether one bed opens or closes . . . budgets have been given out for this year - they have been given out very definitely for every hospital in the country and if I was to put more budget into one hospital, it has to come out of another one."
The MUH has argued that it needs funding for an extra 25 staff including some 15 nursing staff to open the new 750sq m facility, which will cater for 34,000 patients annually - as opposed to the 24,000 or so currently being treated in the hospital's existing 209sq m emergency department.
However, the HSE has said that when original approval was given for the facility, the MUH sought an additional revenue allocation of €400,000 - but when building work finished in January 2007, the MUH requested €1.497million to staff the new facility.
HSE Hospital Network Manager Gerry O'Dwyer, in a reply to a parliamentary question from Cork South Central Labour TD CiaráLynch, said the increased costs at the new unit were related to its geographical layout, which doesn't allow for a phased or piecemeal opening.
Prof Drumm hinted that the situation at the new MUH emergency department might have to be looked at in the context of the fact that there were three existing emergency departments in Cork city - at Cork University Hospital, the South Infirmary Victoria Hospital and MUH.
"Up and down Ireland, there are going to be major questions asked about A&E departments because we have a huge number of them open. In Cork city we have three open within a few miles of one another; in Dublin we have seven open, all relatively close to one another.
"What I am suggesting is that if it is going to be an enormous cost to keep opening them, I think at a time when the services are extremely challenged in terms of keeping what we have going, then I think that's unlikely to happen," he explained to The Irish Times.
Prof Drumm's comments come just a week after a consultant at MUH, Dr Neil Brennan, warned at the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) conference that equipment at the hospital's emergency department may go out of warranty without ever being used if the unit doesn't open soon. "Nobody at the Mercy seems to know when the new A&E will be operating - there is no immediate prospect of it opening, and there is no date fixed for its opening and time is going on," said Dr Brennan.
"Equipment which has been bought is sitting there unused and warranties will expire on some of this equipment so it really is appalling that the issue can't be put to bed and this facility made operational," he added.