A hospital consultant has questioned the Western Health Board's decision to spend £500,000 on a drop-in health advice centre in Galway.
This, he said, took place at a time when parents of sick children were forced to sleep overnight on floors at the nearby University College Hospital (UCHG).
The former president of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association, Dr David Lillis, described the conditions at the paediatric unit at UCHG as "gross" and spoke of "gunge" streaking down the walls of the unit.
Dr Lillis asked if the health board's decision to spend £500,000 on a health cafe at Father Griffin Road could be justified when there was a more urgent need for funds in other areas.
"The paediatric unit is severely lacking in overnight accommodation facilities," he said. "We have individual single rooms, but these are generally for children with cystic fibrosis, leukaemia patients and those with a handicap. The parents cannot stay with them. By and large, the facilities are very poor for overnight accommodation."
He said he had been forced to send some children home, who should have been kept at UCHG overnight, because he could not tolerate a situation in which parents had to sleep on floors.
Dr Lillis suggested that £500,000 might have been spent on temporary accommodation for the children's unit. This was a one-storey, flat-roofed building, and there were times when "gunge" streaked down the walls, he said.
A spokeswoman for the Western Health Board said the paediatric unit at UCHG was listed for development under phase 3 of the hospital's development plan. Renovations at the unit are expected to go ahead next year. She said the unit was not included in the major £70 million phase 2 development which is currently under way at the hospital, and is due to be completed in 2003.
"In the meantime, we have circulated an operational plan to all senior medical and nursing staff as part of our consultation process, to carry out renovations to the current paediatric unit," she said.
"This will make provisions for improved mother and child accommodation. It is intended this will be included in the 2001 service plan."
She said she wondered, however, if it was valid to compare funding for a drop-in health cafe with the spending on the paediatric unit at the hospital.