Downgrading Portlaoise hospital illogical - Tánaiste Leo Varadkar

The removal of services from hospitals such as Portlaoise could happen in the future only if the ambulance services and other hospitals are able to pick up the slack after big investment but at this point the Tánaiste Leo Varadkar also believes downgrade of the Laois hospital would be illogical and very expensive.

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Leo Varadkar was in Portlaoise last Friday April 8, visiting the Canadian company Greenfield Global's new low carbon factory in the IDA Business Park.

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Speaking about the hospital, he said that any cut to services in Portlaoise hospital would not be logical.

"There aren't plans to downgrade the hospital. I know that's been proposed and rumoured. The view that I have and that I always have is that with the expanding population in Laois, you could only do something like that if you put major investment into Naas or into Tallaght. 

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"That would cost a fortune for a start and take many years to do. It's a long time since an emergency department in Ireland has been closed, seven or eight years at this stage, and while hospitals have evolved over this time in terms of services that they offer, I don't see, and I've never seen, the downgrading of Portlaoise to be a solution.

"Without mega investment in Naas and Tallaght you'd make the situation much worse there. 

"It's something I'm familiar with my own constituency as well. We have Connolly hospital in Blanchardstown which is a well performing hospital. It doesn't have the kind of problems with trolleys and overcrowding that other hospitals do, and it's often proposed that the emergency department in Navan should be closed. I know exactly what would happen. We would have a major increase in patients attending Drogheda and Connolly, and you'd have two hospitals that are performing well, not being able to cope any more.

"There's an illogic I think to reducing services in Portlaoise. 

"What we do have a real problem with is recruiting suitably qualified doctors and a lot of that relates to the consultant contract. I hope we can make progress on that in the next couple of months to make those jobs much more attractive. I think it would make a big difference to patient safety issues and the quality of care provided. It is harder to get consultants to take posts in smaller hospitals," Minister Varadkar said.

A downgrade plan published by the HSE in 2017 proposed the removal of A&E, ICU, surgery, paediatrics and maternity. The plan has never officially been abandoned but was not adopted as policy by the Department of Health.

Asked by the Leinster Express if the report recommending downgrade is off the table, he said that the growing ambulance service could eventually bring emergency patients elsewhere. 

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"That's a couple of years ago now and I think it's fair to say that the HSE and the Government decided not to proceed with that. But that's not to say that hospital services don't evolve over time. Emergency medicine is very different to what it used to be.

"When I was a young doctor practicing medicine, if someone had a heart attack or stroke there wasn't an awful lot you could do for them quite frankly. You'd treat their symptoms, make them comfortable and they'd get better or worse and you could do that in any hospital. That has totally changed, you can now stop a stroke in its tracks through thrombectomy and that can't be done in every emergency department, it's only done in two in the country. It's more about taking people to the right places quickly. That's why the ambulance service is so important," he said.

On whether the ambulance callout system needs to be revised due to the occasionally long waiting times, he said investment is ongoing.

"We have made a lot of improvements, there wasn't an air ambulance at all until 2013 or 2014, now we have it and we can improve on it. We are investing about an extra €10m a year in the ambulance service. We are seeing improvements, that 's not to say there won't be periods where there's 10 callouts and only five ambulances. That's a feature unfortunately of any health service,

Laois Offaly Fine Gael Deputy Charlie Flanagan said he does not see a downgrade pf Portlaoise hospital "on the agenda".

"It's absolutely essential that the services remain in Portlaoise. Only recently we had a situation and we have it today, where overcrowding hospitals like Limerick can undoubtably be attributed to a reconfiguration that happened in that region not too far from here that saw the reduction if not closure of the accident and emergency in Nenagh, the next one down the road from here.  We can learn lessons from that in ensuring that we have adequate services. As the Tánaiste said this is a growing county. This hospital is serving more people than ever and so I don't see any downgrade on the agenda," he said.