PROTESTS WERE held in Dundalk and Kilkenny yesterday at plans by the Government to downgrade health services in their respective regions.
In Dundalk, the rally at Earl Street was held over the downgrading of Louth County Hospital. Local politicians estimated the turnout at 4,000. Spokeswoman for the Save Louth Hospital Campaign Anita McCann said the wind-down of services in the northeast will have a detrimental effect for vulnerable people.
“The downgrading of hospitals in Monaghan, Dundalk and the northeast in general is an accident waiting to happen.
“If somebody from the Cooley Mountains or Carlingford gets a heart attack and the nearest appropriate hospital is in Drogheda which is 30-40 miles away, the chances of survival are anyone’s guess,” she said.
Ms McCann says the hospital will see its role reduced to the status of a nursing home.
“What we are going to get in Dundalk will be a nursing service or step-down hospital without doctors which will function from 8am to 8pm. It cannot be stressed hard enough the inconvenience that is about to be imposed on people in north Louth and Cavan/Monaghan,” she said.
The protest in Dundalk comes as a new €11.5 million AE service opened at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda this week.
Emergency care for the Louth/Meath area will shortly be centralised at the Drogheda hospital as will acute medical and critical care services for the region. These services will be moving to Drogheda from Dundalk hospital.
A minor injury unit, which will open 12 hours a day, will be put in place in Dundalk to replace its 24/7 emergency unit.
Some 500 people attended a protest yesterday over the downgrading of services in the Carlow/Kilkenny region. Loraine Monaghan of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, who participated in the protest, said the Government is imposing hardship on the people of the southeast by downgrading services at St Luke’s acute hospital in Kilkenny.