Matt Shanahan Demands 24-7 Cardiac Care for South East

And on behalf of myself and the regional group of Cahillac, I would too would like to wish the staff and yourself of Leinster House a very happy Christmas and New Year. Tanaiste, just over a year ago as a political outsider, I stood outside Leinster House with hand-on-heart campaigners where we delivered to your office as Taoiseach thousands of petitions regarding the funding issues around University Hospital Waterford and most especially the lack of 24-7 cardiac care for the South East region. The problems of service delivery at UHW predate Covid-19. We continue to have some of the longest waiting lists and waiters in the country for all types of services including MRIs, CTs, mammograms, endoscopy, ENT, orthopaedics, ophthalmology. When we asked the HSE for progress they delivered us process. The Marchary Bill of 2015 which you are well aware of. Four calendar years now to award a bill tender to a 5 million euro second cat lab. Six years into the South-Southwest hospital group structure and still no move on bringing the Kilcreen orthopaedic activity into UHW as promised. It has taken us nine months to re-enact a three day diagnostic angiogram list on site. We look at the national children's hospital spend of 2 billion euro. We look at the recent announcement in Cork of 70 million euro and imminent planning for a second children's hospital. We look at our own Dunmore Wing which was completed in April 2018 but had no service budget applied until Covid arrived. The palliative care services there which were part funded by South East Cancer only received a grant of funding in recent weeks. In line with recent trends, HSE announced 12 new consultant appointment positions for UHW. Yet they are not on publicjobs.ie nor have they been approved by the consultant appointments commission. In other words, they are not coming for at least another 12 to 24 months. More process. No progress. The present cardiac services remain the most toxic health issue for the South East region. The hospital is now planning to engage a phased introduction of a seven day 8-to-8 cat lab service. This will basically give us a 50% cover per working week. Last year I spoke about people like Thomas Power, Oona McDervit and now Thomas Frisby who could not access the cat lab on a weekend and died. Their family, Thomas Frisby's family, has three healthcare workers and one of whose siblings required access to the cat lab in the past 10 days. They asked the question, as I asked of you, when are we going to see equality in the South East for 24-7? We have seen major discussion this year on locking down the country to protect life. We have seen major discussion on equality for Ireland and for its people. I ask you, Thornishtia, will you, on behalf of your government, give a commitment to politically deliver increased funding to UHW and to deliver 24-7 cardiac care equality to the South East? No more reviews, no more procrastination, no more process in place of progress. Thank you Deputy Shanahan. Thornishtia. Thanks Deputy. I know this issue has been a very contentious one and is a matter of real importance to the people of Waterford and the South East more broadly and has been for a very long time. The programme for government commits to the provision of a second cat lab in University Hospital Waterford. As set out in the HSC's options appraisal, the preferred option for a second cat lab and associated 12-day ward providing six additional beds is on the roof of the existing cardiology department in Waterford. I know from working with government deputies in the county that the ultimate ambition is to achieve 24-7 primary PCI cover if that is viable. The second cat lab is a major and significant step towards doing exactly that. Funding was allocated in the capital plan for the provision of a second cat lab at University Hospital Galway. Planning permission was received from the City and County Council in January of this year. The disability access certificate was granted in April. The fire certificate was granted in June. Preparation of contract documentation commenced and contractor selection is complete subject to a cooling off period. The project went to tender on the 30th of September. The tender process being used is a two-stage process which normally takes about four months to complete. Tenders for the main contractor were received on the 24th of November, while tenders for the mechanical and electrical subcontractors are due in on the 21st of December. At the works, the new cat lab are due to commence in the first quarter of the new year. It is expected that it will take about 12 months to build and then it is anticipated that it can be commissioned and opened and operating in the first half of 2022. Thank you. Thank you, Gerlach. The Taoiseach said, as I said to you in recent days, that this was not a resourcing issue, that this was actually to do with academic allegiances and reviews and all of that. What I am saying to you is this is absolutely a political issue. We have six cardiac rescue centres in the country, two of them here in Dublin. The only one to serve the 600,000 people of the South East is presently constrained to a 39-hour working week. Maybe sometime next year, in a phased operation, we will get to seven days, eight to eight. This is not good enough in the Ireland of 2020. As I said, we are expending huge amounts of resourcing to try and support people through COVID. The cost of 24-7 in UHW is estimated to be somewhere the order of €3 million per annum. I am asking you, Taoiseach, to set aside reviews to deliver equality now for the South East population, and for those people who live every night with vulnerability because of underlying issues, to assuage their concerns, and to deliver, for once, health equality for the South East, please. Thanks, Stephanie. As you know, the trend across the world when it comes to specialty services like complex cancer surgery or primary PCI is to reduce the number of centres, so that you can have a smaller number of centres with a large number of staff able to sustain 24-7 RODA permanently, and also a large patient load so that you can achieve a certain level of standard. You mentioned that there's two in Dublin. There were three. We went from three in Dublin down to two, and those two centres cover a population of probably two million people all the way from the border with Northern Ireland down to Kilkenny and North Wexford, so roughly one per million people. I appreciate that the Galway and Limerick centres cover a smaller population. So those are always the things that have to be borne in mind. But like I say, the first step to improving cardiac services in Waterford, if you want to do, is building that second cat lab, which is long overdue, and I understand the frustration about it. That will be under construction next year, should we open and up running the year after, and will allow us to extend the hours of that service, not just for Waterford, but for the whole region.