These are
the dreaded four words that no wife, husband, father, mother, brother, sister,
grandmother or grandfather will every wish to ask, when accompanying a loved
one, unfortunate enough to need cardiac care outside the Monday to Friday, 9am
to 5pm window available in University Hospital Waterford.
If you have
not experienced the anxiety of this horrifying journey, and I have not, to Cork
or Dublin, in the back of an ambulance, then none of us can understand the
stress of knowing that the clock is ticking ever so slowly to and, more than
likely, beyond that 90 minute safety window.
The simple
fact is that getting to Cork and Dublin, even with the blues and twos, will in
truth take longer than 90 minutes. One simple hold up, one unaccounted for set
of road works, a sporting weekend, a car crash or simply hitting rush hour
traffic, will eat into this safety time zone. No matter what spin is put on
this by Minister Harris or other Government Ministers it would be a miracle if
that 90 minute window, could ever be achieved in the real the world.
Perhaps,
the Minister has never driven to Cork along the N25? It is at best an o.k. road
and at worst full of bottlenecks, eating into any journey time. The road does
not allow for consistent travel and therefore we cannot rely on time to getting
to our sister Cork hospital for coronary care within the golden timeframe.
Going to
Dublin now has a much better dependable journey time, up the M9 motorway. That
is until you hit the outskirts of Dublin. Once again you are in the hands of
the traffic gods and getting into the heart of Dublin can be hit or miss. Even
if you are in the back of an ambulance, when every second counts, it is still a
time gamble.
 |
| 24th September 2016 |
Our
Minister is adamant that he is “not for turning”, a modern day Mrs Thatcher
perhaps. He has been at pains to let everyone know that the Herity Report, with
all its flaws, will be taken as Gospel. The people in this South East region
will forever be playing traffic roulette in the back of an ambulance.
I recall
meeting Minister Harris, on a number of occasions, in his previous role with
reference to his old portfolio, which included responsibility for national
Government tendering. Thankfully, he listened to our reasoned and sound
arguments to make changes, to allow local businesses to compete with
multi-national companies and he did implement change on this basis. So we can
take some encouragement from this. He is sometimes willing to listen.
As I have
said many times, perhaps we have gone about this in the wrong way! Look at our
Teflon neighbour, Mr Lowry, getting ALL that he wanted, in terms of local
health care provision for Tipperary. We would not have heard about this, only
that we started looking at what other “Government Independents” were getting
for helping Enda come back into power. Mr Lowry went about his business
quietly, methodically and ultimately delivered “exactly what it said on the
tin” of his election manifesto.
 |
| Hook & Browne? |
Have we been
too naive in fighting this battle in the glare of the national media? Quite
simply we have given the likes of Messer Hook and Browne the opportunity to use
a substantial baseball bat, to bash Waterford once again. They are collectively
laughing at us from their Dublin Towers. But rest assured if they were
unfortunate enough to have to endure a 90 minute life or death journey in the
back of an ambulance then their mindset would change in an instant.
We marched
once again in monsoon like conditions, at the weekend, and received breviloquent
RTE coverage. Where now for the Waterford and the South East?
What is
guaranteed is that it will take more than 90 minutes to fix this dilemma.
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