The first indications of how hospital services in the north-east region may be reorganised under the second phase of the Hanly taskforce plan began to emerge yesterday.
GPs in Co Louth who attended a meeting with a senior official of the North Eastern Health Board reported being told that under Hanly II, Navan Hospital would be grouped with James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown, Dublin; that Dundalk Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda would be aligned under Dublin's Beaumont Hospital; and that Cavan General Hospital would come under Sligo General Hospital.
The plan could have huge political implications in the run-up to the local elections.
Dr Mary Grehan, a GP in Dundalk, said it would leave the entire north-east region without a major hospital. "We really got an awful land," she said, adding that no reference had been made to Monaghan General Hospital.
The official who addressed GPs, Mr Tadhg O'Brien, who is assistant chief executive officer of the NEHB and who has also been seconded to work part-time with the new interim Health Service Executive, claimed, however, that he had no idea how services in the region would be reconfigured under Hanly II. He told The Irish Times he was addressing the GPs on plans for a joint surgery department between Dundalk and Drogheda hospitals when he was asked if the joint department would continue under Hanly II.
He told those present, he said, what might happen under Hanly II, but his comments, he claimed, were based purely on comment in the media.
"I know nothing about Hanly II. I was speculating on the basis of media reports," he said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health stressed that the team devising the Hanly II plan had not even begun its work yet because consultants had refused to take part, in protest at the introduction of a new insurance scheme to cover malpractice.
There was therefore no way anyone knew yet how the north-east or other regions outside the mid-west and east coast area health boards would be reconfigured, she said.
Ms Kathleen O'Meara, spokeswoman for the Health Services Action Group, said she feared Hanly II was being kept under wraps until after the local elections.
Her group, which has urged voters not to support any candidate who has endorsed Hanly I, called for the immediate publication of Hanly II.
"Anything less would be a deliberate effort to conceal the bad news of Hanly II from the public in advance of the June 11th poll," she said.
The Minister for Health rubbished her claims.
"The fictitious claims made by Senator O'Meara and the Hospital Action Group are grossly irresponsible and amount to nothing more than deliberate scaremongering and an attempt to use the Hanly report purely for electoral gain," Mr Martin responded. Meanwhile controversy continues in the north-east over the fact that Dundalk Hospital, in accordance with a recent NEHB directive, will not have consultant surgeons on site after 5 p.m. on weekdays or at weekends from July 1st.
Yesterday, in a joint statement, the three consultant surgeons in Drogheda said the changes could not be delivered "without collegial understanding and support".