Senator Phil Prendergast

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HSE SERVICE PLAN CUTBACKS ALARMING - PRENDERGAST

Issued : Thursday 14 January, 2010

Details of the leaked HSE Draft Service Plan for 2010 are very alarming.

If media reports are correct, the HSE is hellbent on closing a total of 1100 beds in many hospitals around the country, and there is no way this can be done without seriously impacting on the quality of care that is provided.

The proposal to cut back the number of people who are admitted to our hospitals by almost 10 per cent, can only mean that people who need treatment will not get it.

The Government and the HSE will tell us that in the current economic climate, there is no choice but to cut back in public spending and that our health services cannot be spared. Nobody could deny that this Fianna Fail created crisis is not serious, but that does not mean that the people who rely on public services, and those who provide them, should be singled out.

These savage cutbacks could have been avoided and a process of reducing costs and of reforming the way that our health service is run, could have already been under way if the Government had not unilaterally collapsed the talks with the unions in December.

Healthcare workers and their representatives put on the table, a series of radical reforms which would have had far-reaching effects in how our health system operates, but that offer was thrown back at them in a most humiliating way.

Now we have a situation where industrial peace in the health sector, is a thing of the past and where patients who need treatment and who are entitled to treatment, will be denied it.