Deputy Denis Naughten has confirmed he will be staying in politics despite recently leaving the Fine Gael party over the closure of Roscommon Hospital’s A&E department.
Speaking to the Athlone Advertiser this week, the TD explained that he has no intention of leaving politics behind. “I suppose I’m going to sit down during the summer and think it all through. My objective in life had always been to be a Government Minister, I don’t think I’ve made a secret of that; I’m going to reassess everything now. When you look at some other papers they give the impression that I’m going to pull out of politics altogether, but that isn’t my intention.
“I have no plans whatsoever to pull out of politics. But yes, I am going to reassess where I am, sure I have to reassess what my goals and objectives are. Naturally enough, as an independent TD they’re going to be very different.”
The Roscommon native has spent the last month campaigning to keep the A&E unit open. This came to a head on Monday June 27, two weeks before the Government closed Roscommon’s A&E department, when Taoiseach Enda Kenny was welcomed to Monksland to officially open Deputy Naughten’s new constituency office for the area. At the time Deputy Naughten was not aware of any concrete plans to close the department and was faced with a large protest when he and the Taoiseach arrived in Monksland.
“I’d spoken with Enda’s media adviser that morning and I had told him exactly the situation in relation to Roscommon. I said the talks were ongoing, I was directly involved in talks with James Reilly, and my advice to the Taoiseach was to point out that those talks were ongoing and that no final decision had been made. So I was very surprised when the Taoiseach said what he did.”
The campaign to keep A&E in Roscommon open was intense, so much so that the TD, his staff, and his family were faced with intimidation and anger on a daily basis before he eventually voted against the Government on closing the A&E and lost the party whip.
“The people are livid, they are extremely angry, my wife was verbally assaulted outside the opening of the new Monksland office in a very nasty manner on its opening day. People were very nasty to me, they were very nasty to my staff, but you could understand there is huge anger out there in relation to it.
“Here we had a Government that gave a commitment a couple of months ago that they were going to maintain services, and all of a sudden when it came to the litmus test, not only did they not live up to their commitment but in fact are presently implementing the last Government’s policy in a far quicker, speedier manner. So I can understand people being very annoyed in relation to it.”
Deputy Naughten went on to say that he never felt personally threatened by voters, and warned that Ballinasloe hospital is not out of danger yet, and could see its A&E department’s opening hours reduced.
“Roscommon Hospital was always a very emotive issue and it’s very hard for someone to understand unless they are actually in the eye of the storm. If you could imagine the people of Mullingar or Ballinasloe were told that their accident and emergency department was closing in three weeks time, and there’s nothing you can do about it, people would be very angry as well,” he added.
Deputy Naughten was first elected to the Dail in 1997. He will continue to sit in the Dail as an independent TD after the summer break.
