The Health Minister says an elective hospital for the Midwest is still ‘on the table’.
Stephen Donnelly has turned the sod on the new 96-bed block at University Hospital Limerick today, which will take two years to complete.
An elective facility has long been mooted as one of the potential solutions to the overcrowding crisis at UHL, though one isn’t provided for Limerick under the all-party Slaintecare plan.
The Health Minister and the Taoiseach have appeared at odds over the issue in recent weeks, with Micheal Martin saying he wished to pursue it and Minister Donnelly appearing to rule it out.
However, the Health Minister now says it may be an avenue pursued by Government:
” I don’t think anything should be taken off the table I think we have to have a very open conversation about all of this. There is an idea, that I have spoken with the hospital team today about that is working very well in Tallaght. It’s a centre just off the Tallaght site they actually retrofitted space that was going to be used for shops… on the back of that Tallaght have managed to reduce their day patient list by almost a third.”
