MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney said yesterday the HSE would "not be held to ransom" by the Mercy University Hospital in Cork which is seeking extra funding for staff to open its new €4.7 million emergency department which has lain idle for over a year since completion.
Ms Harney ruled out providing an extra €1.5 million which the hospital says it needs to recruit an extra 25 staff to run the facility. She said hospitals had to realise they must learn to open new facilities with the same number of staff if they are dealing with the same patient throughput.
"I very much regret that a state-of-the-art facility that costs so much public money lies idle. My understanding is there is a request for €1.5 million more in the way of resources with 25 more staff - this cannot be justified," she said.
"Cork city has three AE departments at the moment and it may well be that we need to examine whether a city like this requires three AE departments and certainly if we were in another jurisdiction, we would probably just have one AE department."
Ms Harney appealed to staff at the hospital to move into the new emergency department which was completed in March 2007 but has remained unopened since and said that it was the patients in Cork who were suffering as a consequence.
"We could not justify and cannot justify that this new state-of-the-art facility remains unused and I discussed this matter with Prof Brendan Drumm of the HSE and I think action will have to be taken with institutions that don't have the capacity to open facilities.
"Certainly, for my part, if we cannot get agreement from staff associations in future, we will not be putting capital investment in where we will then be held to ransom to open it when the time comes."
Ms Harney said there appeared to be a mindset in the health service that a new facility automatically means extra staff.
"We are spending 9 per cent of our national income on health - that compares very well with the rest of Europe and with the OECD - and yet every time we build a new facility there are undue demands for additional staff," she said.
The hospital had argued it needed funding for an extra 25 staff to open the new 750sq m facility which was designed to 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.
Talks on staffing levels and patient capacity have been ongoing since last year between the HSE and hospital management which announced in April that it would not be able to open the new facility on a 24/7 basis but would instead open it on a part- time basis from 8am to 8pm.
A hospital spokesman said yesterday the new AE was designed to increase the scale and quality of service provided and the hospital's objective was to ensure the unit, which was approved by Government, could perform at the level intended.