Campaigning for South Tipperary General
Posted by Alan Kelly on March 10, 2009 at 08:16 PM
Last night I attended the rally in Clonmel to maintain the services of South Tipp General Hospital. It was deja vu for me after being so heavily involved in the campaign in Nenagh. There was a large turnout at the meeting and I addressed the crowd about what I thought the HSE's plans were.
Again I stated that I believe that the HSE and this Government have a plan to create a two tiered health service - one private and one public and within that public tier will be two types of hospitals - large urban hospitals and smaller basic day care centres. I am totally opposed to this plan. I beleieve local people deserve local services. I do not believe that it is appropriate to say that you need 370,000 people in an encatchment in order to have a large hospital witha ll the services. The HSE calls these future hospitals 'centres of excellence', but I prefer to call them 'centres of minimum competence'. Nothing can be excellent until it achieves that 'excellence' and these hospitals only exist on paper at the moment.
I also do not believe that the HSE have any coherent plans for the ambulance services, the roll out of primary care teams or the way in which they are going to involve GPS. Finally it is laughable to say that they have the money to implement any plans.
Shen Cashel hospital lost its services, a group representing the Cashel areas got a legal agreement with the HSE that stated that Clonmel (South Tipp General) would not lose its services. Now there are rumours regarding these services being transferred to Waterford. I hope that this agreement is watertight. It was signed with the South East Health Board.
As with any other hospital action groups, I will support them wholeheartedly. Rural Ireland is under attack and the ithdrawal of hospital services is a fundamental example of this.
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