'Nothing has been delivered' say Portlaoise Hospital Action Committee

On the back of a successful campaign to thwart the immediate downgrading of the hospital and the publication of the flawed report by Susan O’Reilly of the HSE's Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, the Portlaoise Hospital Action Committee (PHAC) said: “We needed to give our local representatives the time and space to come good on the statesmanly promises they pronounced” (Leinster Express, April 7th, 2019).

So, we waited!

The clinical community waited for Minister for Health Simon Harris to, as he put it: “directly engage with the m” (Midland Radio 103, December 20th, 2017).

The staff of Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise (MRHP) waited for Minister Harris to visit.

PHAC waited for the consultation with the stakeholders which had been promised.

We waited for the Department review committee to engage with us, we waited for the Chairman of that committee to make contact, we waited for Minister Harris to at least acknowledge receipt of the independent report, which we collaboratively compiled and sent to him.

PHAC waited for a meeting with Minister Harris. It’s two weeks out from a General Election.

We are still waiting!

To say the Portlaoise Hospital Action Committee is disappointed with the in-action of Minister Harris would be a massive understatement but perhaps we should have seen that coming.

With crises after crises in Health and the HSE over the past five years or more; the fiasco that is the National Children’s Hospital, the cervical check scandal, the trolley crises and two motions of no confidence in the Dáil, it should probably not have been any surprise to us that he would fail to deliver for the hospital too.

A bigger disappointment to the PHAC however is the abject failure of our ‘own’ Minster, Charlie Flanagan, to deliver for the Hospital despite sharing a Cabinet table with Minister Harris for the past number of years.

Since joining the Committee on the podium at the Light for Lives rally in Portlaoise just over two years ago much has been promised by the Minister. Nothing has been delivered.

In spite of recent pronouncements to the contrary and providing fresh reassurances that ‘good news’ was imminent and that Minister Harris would meet with a delegation from the PHAC ‘in the next week’ nothing has happened.

The PHAC offered to travel anywhere, at any time to meet Minister Harris.

We desperately want for the promises to be real but we fear that we were being led down the electoral garden path.

Ultimately, we are reminded that when Charlie Flanagan departs for work, he leaves his Laois flag at home and hoists the Party flag instead.

Lest the Minister fear the accusation of parish pump politics, we pointed out one of the more salient points from our independent report, and an iron-clad argument in favour of the retention of services at MRHP; that the downgrading of the A & E would violate the principle of ‘Safe Custody’ for inmates and staff of the Portlaoise-Midlands prison complex (now four prisons, population of 1700+) and be a clear breach of the Irish Prison Service Healthcare Standards.

That the Minister for Justice and Equality, with Europe’s largest maximum-security prison campus on his own doorstep, could, in such a position of power fail to deliver even the minimum requirements for his own constituency is unbelievable.

We hope that we are mistaken but as current affairs appear, we have a responsibility to share with the public in the run up to the elections, that Charlie Flanagan and his party have let us all down.

On their election posters, they ask us to #LookForward.

If we were to base our vote on past efforts regarding MRHP, Charlie would certainly lose his seat.

To vote for him and his party is not voting for “a future to look forward to”, as they claim.

To borrow the words of George Carlin,

“If you don’t vote” with MRHP in mind, “you lose the right to complain” if we lose its services.