Hospital transport decision not made

NO DECISION had been made on a withdrawal next month of HSE ambulance services from Donegal to Kerry, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has insisted.

“Meetings are being arranged by the Minister for Health this very day to deal with it.” Dr James Reilly, he added, would be happy to report to the Dáil when the matter was sorted out.

Mr Kenny was responding to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. He said his party colleague Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin had revealed the existence of the HSE plan ending the ambulance transport services for hundreds of dialysis and cancer patients in the west.

Hospital managements had been told the service would no longer be available from July 1st to “take these very ill people to and from hospital for lifesaving treatment”.

Mr Adams quoted from the HSE letter, which said that “all of the ambulance service transport budget for 2011 has now been expended”.

Mr Kenny said he did not share Mr Adams’s “scaremongering tactics”, and he was as concerned as the Sinn Féin leader about situations where the elderly might not be in a position to receive the attention they deserved.

In some cases over the years, people within the health system had provided brilliant opportunities and assistance while other cases highlighted in the House had shown up the inefficiency in many respects of a health service that was allowed to run out of control.

Every person who needed medical attention should get it to the highest standard and level of treatment, he added. The Minister for Health would focus on that aspect of the health services.

Mr Adams said: “There are cancer patients and dialysis patients, including some from the Taoiseach’s county . . . They have been told there will be no ambulance services to bring them to and from hospital for treatment.”

Mr Kenny said that not every person going for treatment, or to attend facilities, travelled by ambulance. He had met a woman with breast cancer, who had to travel by bus at 5am, making a round trip of 180km to Galway for a treatment lasting four minutes.

He added that Dr Reilly had received Government approval to set up a special delivery unit to tackle waiting lists so as not to have a situation in which 329 people – or anyone – were on trolleys.