Stark warning that people will die if hospital battle lost

People will die if we lose Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan. That was the stark message delivered by local GP Dr Ruairí Hanley to the 10,000 protestors who lined the streets of Navan on Saturday in protest at the downgrading of services at the hospital. He said he had listened to a “lot of guff” about patient safety in Navan and most of those who were talking about it had never treated a patient in their lives. “How can a patient be safer on a hospital trolley in Drogheda than in a bed in Navan?” he asked. He claimed the HSE had lied to the people of Monaghan and Dundalk and were now lying to the people of Navan, because “they are pathological liars”. He said what the HSE had done to try and justify cutbacks in Navan was nothing short of a scandal. “They have blackened the name of the staff in the hospital with a smear campaign. They suspended an innocent man and a brilliant doctor who has now been reinstated,” he added. “These are the tactics of faceless cowards who hide in their offices in Dublin.” Dr Hanley said that we cannot afford is to have 19,000 administrators looking after 12,000 hospital beds and it was time “to tackle the waste and inefficiencies and give P45s to the clowns who belong in a circus tent and not running the hospitals”. A former patient of the hospital told the protestors that she owned her life to Our Lady’s. Margaret Regan, who had never addressed a crowd before, said she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 and, within three weeks, she was being treated in Our Lady’s Hospital. “I am here today because of this hospital. It saved my life,” she said. Louise O’Reilly, who was representing workers at the hospital and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, told the crowd that, on Thursday night, five people had been admitted “to this fine hospital in Navan” from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. She pledged the support of Congress to the campaign and said they were shocked and outraged at the Government’s attitude. She said that, every day, Our Lady’s Hospital provided a top-quality health service and the huge turnout at the rally was sending a clear message to the Government. “We have taken enough. We need our hospital,” she said, She warned the Government that the people of Navan would remember what they were doing to Navan Hospital and they would also remember that Government Ministers thought nothing of spending €13,000 a night on comfortable suites in Rome. “We won’t forget the sight of BMWs and Mercs driving into Farmleigh. When the election comes, we will make them suffer,” she said. Save Navan Hospital campaign chairman Cllr Peadar Tóibín pointed out that if a miner was crushed underground in an accident at Tara Mines, they would no longer be brought to a nearby hospital and the emergency plan that would have kicked off in the event of an accident at the mine was now redundant. He said that the money being spent on bailing out Anglo Irish Bank would build 70 regional hospitals around the country. When Fianna Fail Deputy Thomas Byrne was invited to address the crowd, he was booed, until Cllr Tóibín intervened and told the crowd that “we still believe in free speech”. Deputy Byrne told the protesters: “This hospital will not close. The Fianna Fáil representatives will not allow it to close.” He said he was there to represent his constituents and his family had been treated very well in Our Lady’s Hospital. He pointed out that doctors were saying one thing and the HSE another and he wanted a Dail Committee to investigate to get a true picture. Fine Gael Spokesman on Health, Dr James Reilly, said the Royal College of Surgeons had no complaints about elective surgery at the hospital, “so why close it down? Where will all those patients go? We need to dismantle the HSE and put in a fair system.”