Matt Shanahan: South East cardiac lab removal prompts demands

Can I firstly acknowledge the continuing impact of COVID-19 on our most vulnerable, our debt of gratitude to our frontline and community healthcare workers grows ever greater. Can I update the House regarding some Waterfordians who are supporting our national efforts to overcome the many challenges the coronavirus epidemic is presenting each and every day. I would like to thank Commandant Patrick Kelly of the Irish Defence Forces. Dr Kelly is an expert in infectious disease management and has been supporting my office in recent weeks in assisting implementation of large industry back to work protocols. I would like to thank the Taoiseach's office for formidable support and that of Minister Humphreys also for assisting and supporting in these matters. Can I also commend Ambassador Dan Mulhall. Through close cooperation over a number of weeks with the Consul General in Atlanta, Shane Stephens, Ambassador Mulhall and the British Consulate General, along with my office, have secured the repatriation home yesterday to Ireland of four Irish nationals. These citizens were suffering from significant weeks of arduous lockdowns in ships off the coast of the United States with no immediate prospect of return to Ireland. We would like to thank Ambassador Mulhall in a very significant way for his services here. I would like to pay thanks to Taoiseach to Hospital Management at University Hospital Waterford for their continuing efforts in COVID activity. Further to my request some weeks ago in this House, they directed the UHW South East Regional Pathology Laboratory to facilitate the analysis of COVID swabs to be taken in our residential care setting. This has enabled test results to be turned around in less than 48 hours and is significantly assisting keeping our Waterford nursing homes largely COVID free. Additionally, to support I requested and received from the Health Minister, I can confirm that significant initiatives in medical device and PPE development by our Applied Materials Technology Gateway at WIT are now in development and are being supported by HSE. Further that business promoters in Waterford who wish to remain anonymous are playing a major part in assisting large volume specification approved PPE purchase in China, which is helping to protect our frontline healthcare workers. Waterford and the South East is giving much to the national effort Taoiseach, but there remains a significant issue to be clarified with respect to our national standing and treatment. In recent days, a modular cardiac CAT lab in place since 2017 providing diagnostic angiogram services has been removed from UHW, leaving the entire South East population of 500,000 entirely dependent on one operational CAT lab now being operated in the Whitfield UPMC private hospital. The people of the South East have yet again pushed back to 2016 operational standards, one CAT lab for 39 hours per week in a supposed nationally designated cardiac care centre dealing with acute heart attack. The 14-year-old main catheterization laboratory in UHW was scheduled for a four-month refit, which is presently stopped because of COVID-19 infection control protocols. The new Whitfield lab recently installed a commission to their lab in eight weeks, our remodification scheduled for 14, which will probably now be 20 weeks. A second additional CAT lab your government promised on the 18th of September 2018 and you said it would be built in a 13-month program has not even yet cleared to a pre-qualification listing for construction tender award. Taoiseach, I could make a phone call, five phone calls here today and I could find five contractors who are pre-qualified to do that work. I think it's fair to say that if political capital in Waterford was counted in currency, ours at present would constitute a bucket of escudos. Questions I asked the Health Minister on these issues in this House on April 24 remained unanswered up to about five minutes ago when I received communication from my office to say a statement has come in from the Minister. Funnily enough, it was dated May 14th. I welcome the press release that issued two days ago to one of your Fine Gael senators, which states with respect to the development of a second CAT lab at UHW and I quote, it is anticipated the project will go to tender before late July. Can I say, Taoiseach, that I am anticipating a three-course meal at home this evening when I return to Waterford, but given that my wife works full time and I have three young kids, I'd say I have little chance of it. The timeline that's being discussed is 22 months after the initial announcement, Taoiseach. Must we conclude that we may anticipate the reactivation of the refurbishment of our existing CAT lab also in coming months. Can I bring you back Taoiseach to a statement you personally made in Waterford on the 31st of July 2017 at the opening of the extension to Bosch and Laam where you were speaking on the issues of education and healthcare. There you said, so long as I am Taoiseach, Waterford will not be neglected or forgotten. I am asking you now Taoiseach to provide action to this fine sentiment you so clearly expressed and as someone with deep roots in Waterford. Will you Taoiseach instruct your department to take responsibility and oversight for both the remodification timelines of the existing CAT lab at UHW and for project execution of the second permanent CAT lab facility? Will your department also oversee the equitable expansion of cardiac resourcing at the Waterford Centre? We know from three years of recent HSE ambulance data that just 1.5% of cardiac heart attack patients transferred to outright region centres when the Waterford Centre is closed arrive within the clinical timeframe. This means that 98.5% do not. The people of the South East Taoiseach have waited long enough to have this National Centre placed on par with the five other regional cardiac care centres in the country. So I am asking you, will you, during the remaining term of this present government, ensure steps are taken immediately to approve and mandate delivery of what has been promised and is required to us and in so doing provide some redress to the inequality and capacity constraint on our present South East Regional Cardiac Service? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Shannon. The Taoiseach. Thanks very much, Deputy. I want to thank Deputy Shannon for his remarks and also echo his words of thanks in particular to that great Waterford man, Dan Munhall, our ambassador in the US, who has done a lot of work getting people safely home. My department, as the deputy probably is aware, is made up of 150 civil servants and while they are great people, I am afraid they just do not have the wherewithal to take on the project management of specific projects, whether they be CAT labs or motorways or any specific project of an infrastructural nature, but it is a matter that I have an interest in. I am as frustrated as the deputy is and indeed as Senator Cummins is at how slow and difficult it has been to get the second CAT lab built in Waterford and I am going to continue to pursue it in this government and in the next if I am part of it and I know the deputy will as well. I am advised by the HSC that there has not been a break in continuity for cardiology patients in University Hospital Waterford and the new CAT lab in the Whitfield is very welcome and ensures there is a more stable solution while awaiting the build of the second CAT lab in University Hospital Waterford. In addition, a further consultant interventional cardiologist is in the final stages of recruitment through the public appointment service. They advised me that an additional interventionist will allow for a 7-day, 8am to 8pm service in the existing CAT lab and interviews for this position took place on 27 January. Hopefully that will come to fruition. The South West Hospital group has advised that the existing CAT lab is being prioritised for upgrading. This decision was based on assessments conducted by the National Clinical Lead for Medical Devices on the history and age profile of the equipment in the lab and a number of incidents of equipment failure in 2019. They advised that a number of options were explored and following this options exercise it was agreed by all stakeholders to work in partnership with UPMC Whitfield and to agree a service level agreement to use their newly constructed CAT lab in Waterford for the duration of the upgrade. The Minister of Health is proceeding with the provision of a second CAT lab in Waterford based on the HSE's preferred option for its location and operation. As set out in the appraisal, the preferred option is for a second CAT lab associated with a 12-bed day ward delivering six additional beds on the roof of the existing cardiology department, which will operate five days a week and provide diagnostic services. The HSE has advised that funding was allocated in the 2019 capital plan for the provision of the second CAT lab in Waterford. That money is being carried over to 2020 and on 9 January planning permission was received by Waterford City and County Council. The HSE further advised that preparation of the contract documents is now commenced. Contractor selection is underway. They tell me the tender will be complete by the end of July and that it is expected that construction will commence in October with a 10 to 12-month programme. It was noted by the HSE that the works and schedules were delayed due to COVID-19. That is the update on the position now. I know it is something that the Deputy and other deputies from Waterford, indeed the Senator, will pursue. I fully appreciate, given that this has taken so long, that nobody in Waterford is going to believe this happens until it does happen. But it is something that I will continue to take an interest in and pursue. Thanks, Taoiseach, for those comments. Rather than asking your department to project managers if you could release the funding, Taoiseach, that would speed up the whole process immeasurably. Thank you. Thank you very much, Taoiseach. Thanks, Geoffrey. The funding has been released by the Department of Health to the HSE. So, if there is a problem with it, I have not been informed of any problem with the funding. I know there is a delay in getting the works done. But I will check with the CEO of the HSE today to see if there is any difficulty with the funding. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, John Pweyrus. Thank you. .