Health
Issued : Sunday 4 April, 2010
*Cllr. Leonard Hatrick has expressed his Concern over Sale of Health Board Lands and St Brigid’s Hospital properties at a time when this Hospital in Ardee as well as other Hospitals in the North East are under Treat of Closure.*
Cllr. Leonard Hatrick said this week that there is growing concern amongst the general public in relation to the sale of St Brigid's Psychiatric Hospital and Lands, as announced by Minister for Mental Health Mr. John Maloney and the present Fianna Fail Green Party Government. Leonard stated that the sale of previously owned properties by the Health Board had shown to be of no benefit whatsoever to the psychiatric patients in Ardee. He said that the former North Eastern Health, Board, was abolished by the government in order for the government to take over the control and the running of these intuitions out of the hands of the Local County Councillors, and replace them with government Quangos who lacked the experience of hospital management and has not the slightest idea of the demands of mental health requirements in any particular area. Cllr. Hatrick said that the only specific interest the government had in the countries psychiatric hospitals was how to get their hands on the lands and properties in order to sell them off to prop up the economy. He said that in the life of the last three governments in the Irish republic, the only people who was attacked by the government was the most vulnerable in society and it should be no surprise to anyone to see the daily neglect of the department of health in the part closure of a number of local hospitals at Dundalk Monaghan, Navan, and this together with the Regional hospital in Drogheda, the Lourdes Hospital, unable to cater for the catchment’s area which is allotted to this hospital and has now has a population of at least at three times greater than it had originally in the 1990s.
It is almost unbelievable to discover that in 2010, a new Accident & Emergency Unit which has long been completed still lies idle despite its costing of millions of Euro to build and more importantly it’s much needed space to administer this urgent service. Other hospitals which have come under the eye of the present government in the North Eastern Health Board area for closure, are St. Joseph’s in Trim, the general hospital Navan, St. Mary’s hospital Castleblayney and the County hospital in Dundalk general which is little more than 50 years in use.
In conclusion, we are sadly made aware only in the immediate past week that the University Hospital in Galway which was declared a Centre of Excellency by the Minister for Health Ms. Harney, for the treatment of Cancer; now finds itself with no monies to provide cancer treatment medicines or to employ the required number of nurses as was identified by the HSE, to run the centre.
Cllr 
