Dundalk to miss out in HSE's new capital funding plan

Dundalk looks set to miss out on capital funding for healthcare, following the HSE’s announcement of its ten-year Capital Development Programme, which sees major projects in Ardee and Drogheda set to be progressed.

As well as five new theatres at Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda, the hospital is set to see Emergency Department expansion and an additional 24 beds at the hospital’s surgical ward. 

There are also plans for phased development of St Mary’s Drogheda, as well as a 50-bed community nursing unit in Ardee and a new ambulance base in the town. 

Welcoming the news on the Ardee nursing unit, Cllr Dolores Minogue said: “it is a fantastic facility for those who need to use it and this new build will add to it, the elderly will enjoy the new build making their lives more comfortable, which is important  for them and their families and for the nurses and carers.”

Focusing on the lack of investment in Dundalk, local councillor Ruairí Ó Murchú said: “No amount of window dressing will take away from the fact that Dundalk still has no Primary Care Centre, no CAMHS service and a dilapidated prefab at Ladywell for mental health services.

Cllr Ó Murchú continued: “I have met with HSE managers who have told me that they are working with impossible budgets – the proposed closure of Sruthán House in Dundalk is the outworking of this.

“I have met with countless families who are trying to obtain physio, OT, speech and language and other therapies for their children – the waiting list for assessment alone is two years.

“It is the job of the Government to provide healthcare services and I wholeheartedly welcome any positive announcements, however there are glaring gaps in provision which are impacting negatively on people across this county”, Cllr Ó Murchú added.

Labour senator Ged Nash was also critical of the announcement, and said that  “the planned investment in St. Joseph’s Ardee and St. Mary’s and Boyne View House in Drogheda was made in January 2016” and that “this is a simple restatement of commitments already made and I will be keeping the pressure on Fine Gael to ensure that these commitments are honoured in full.”

Senator Nash added that “Any investment in health facilities is to be welcomed but plan in general is light on detail and I predict will be a moveable as the true cost of the massive overruns in the Childrens’ Hospital budget start to bite.

 “As ten-year plans go, it is distinctly under-ambitious. The additional beds slated for the Lourdes Hospital won’t go close to meeting demand at our mayor regional centre of excellence as the population in Louth, Meath and North County Dublin continues to surge.

“It is also critical that the €1million x-ray room project pulled from the emergency department at the Lourdes Hospital last October is fully reinstated and delivered”, the Labour Senator concluded.