Hospital work to start in 2011, says Cowen

WORK WILL start on the construction of a €50 million extension to Sligo General Hospital next January,  Taoiseach Brian Cowen said at the weekend.

But Mr Cowen’s undertakings on the future of the hospital were dismissed as “waffle” by campaigners who said there was no logic to the planned 95-bed extension given that the existing facility was being “systematically downgraded”.

Jim O’Sullivan spokesman for the Sligo-based Save Our Cancer Services Group, who opposed the transfer of breast cancer facilities from Sligo hospital to Galway, said the group believed there was now a systematic dismantling of services at the hospital.

In the course of an address to the Sligo Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, Mr Cowen said “enabling works” such as site clearance for the new extension would begin in January.

He also told the chamber that a second oncologist would be appointed in Sligo and that arrangements were being put in place to ensure that mammography services will resume at the hospital.

But those who staged a picket to coincide with the Taoiseach’s visit to Sligo on Friday evening said yesterday that they were not reassured.

“We believe it was no accident that when the breast cancer facilities were being centralised that they left one entire region of the country barren of services,” said Mr O’Sullivan.

He said two applications for private hospitals were now before the planning department of Sligo County Council while the proposed co-located hospital at Sligo hospital was still not off the table. “That is the real agenda,” said Mr O’Sullivan.

Campaigners who fought last year’s  transfer of the breast cancer unit are angry that contrary to undertakings given by Minister for Health Mary Harney at the  time, patients have to travel to Galway for follow-up mammograms which were to have been available in Sligo.