Yesterday's meeting heard two personal testimonies in support of Monaghan General Hospital.
Ms Susan Sherry, who lives four miles from the town, said her children had all been born there and had received excellent care whenever they needed it. She was admitted to the hospital with a very serious illness in 1986 and subsequently transferred to St Vincent's in Dublin where her consultant told her the initial treatment she got at Monaghan had saved her life.
More recently her son, badly injured in a farm accident, had been in an ambulance and on his way to the hospital within minutes. He was in such pain he bent a metal bar in the ambulance and she wondered how he could have endured a trip to Cavan or Drogheda.
More recently still, her married daughter was taken to the hospital in the early hours of the morning. She died shortly afterwards but at least she died in comfort and in the presence of her family. Had the intensive care unit in Monaghan not been available she would have died in an ambulance and without her family around her.
Her husband's life had also been saved by the proximity of the hospital when he was admitted following a heart attack.
Ms Nuala Macklin said her 81-year-old father, Kevin, a former county councillor for north Monaghan, had been transferred to Cavan General Hospital for surgery for stomach cancer because of delays in getting the surgery done at Monaghan. Cavan itself was under such pressure he got far less time than planned in the intensive care unit.
"Hassle, hassle, hassle," she told the meeting. "Stand up and be counted and get your hospital back. They did it for Tullamore [where a new €150 million hospital is to be built] they can do it for you."