“The writing is clearly on the wall for our public health service in Galway,” according to Independent city councillor Catherine Connolly, as planned cutbacks threaten to destroy the viability of the service.
According to Cllr Connolly, the HSE West has confirmed “further cutbacks of the most serious nature”, during a recent briefing on its service plan for 2012.
Cllr Connolly said the planned cutbacks are “shocking”, contain numerous “contradictions” and overall “make no sense”.
It is understood that the HSE West said that in addition to the cutbacks made over the last number of years, the budget for the acute hospitals (including the Regional and Merlin Park ) would now be reduced by a further 10 per cent, while the primary care budget would be reduced by two per cent.
There will also be further cutbacks of between two and four per cent in services for older persons, mental health, disability services, and child care.
Cllr Connolly said there is currently a “serious backlog” in relation to the provision of child development clinics in the city and county because posts for nurses and area medical officers have not been filled. She added that failure to fill posts have also “seriously undermined” services provided by public health nurses
Regarding waiting lists for both in patient and out patients procedures/operations, Cllr Connolly said the figures are “truly shocking”. The last update given by the HSE West said there were more than 20,000 patients waiting between two and four years for treatment.
Cllr Connolly said a further problem comes with the 683 staff who are about to exit the HSE on a regional basis. Of this figure 183 are leaving the HSE in Galway. This works out as 80 from the hospitals and 103 from primary care, the vast majority of whom are nurses.
Cllr Connolly also pointed out that the service plan acknowledges that step down beds in nursing homes are an “absolute necessity”, but that it also “fails to provide for these beds” and goes further by providing for the “further closure of public nursing homes beds and public nursing homes including St Francis with a further reduction of four beds for the elderly in Merlin Park”.
Cllr Connolly said “the writing is clearly on the wall for our public health service in Galway and that is should happen under the watch of Labour is unforgivable”.
She will be raising the cutbacks and “utter contradictions in the plan” at the forum meeting next in Merlin Park next Tuesday and also at the briefing with the new CEO Bill Maher on Monday.
Cllr Connolly is also calling on the Government’s Galway West TDs - Derek Nolan, Brian Walsh, and Sean Kyne - to “break their silence and to ensure the HSE’s own plan for step down beds in St Francis Home is put into operation immediately”.
