THE ARCHBISHOP of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has warned that Crumlin Children's Hospital will not be able to continue providing quality care unless it is allocated extra funding.And in a withering attack on the HSE and the Government, he said that Ireland had squandered its prosperity by not investing money back into the health service.
Speaking on RTE's This Week programme the Primate, who is also chairman of the board of Crumlin, said that detailed plans for a National Children's Hospital at Dublin's Mater Hospital were still at a very early stage, despite being recommended in the summer of 2006.
And he said the HSE had suggested introducing a waiting list in Crumlin in an effort to make savings. "I'm puzzled by exactly what is going to happen," he said. "We are now a number of years after the McKinsey report (which recommended the Mater site) and still haven't come up with a pattern of care. There's talk now of having accident and emergency services in Tallaght, Blanchardstown and Loughlinstown, which seems to me to be having a splintering of the service to areas in Dublin rather than having a genuinely national centre.
"In the meantime the service that Crumlin is providing will have to be seriously curtailed due to a lack of funding. When we asked where we should cut back, looking at efficiencies, we were told to look at the idea of introducing waiting lists.
"A waiting list is a very different thing for a child, and I thought we were trying to eliminate waiting lists. A six-month delay for a child of four years is over 25pc of their life."
Although some strides had been made in improving the health service, particularly community services for the elderly and housebound, the big picture scenario was not up to the required standard, he said.
"At the period in which Ireland was enjoying great economic success, it wasn't pumping back the necessary funds into the healthcare system that was necessary and the results then were a mixture," Dr Martin said.
The HSE said last night that plans for the National Children's Hospital were being "progressed", but as the biggest project of its type in the history of the health service, it was a complicated process.
"There's a development board in place and it is being progressed," a spokesman said. "The HSE also worked with hospitals experiencing funding difficulties, and there was no question of budgets being cut," because of the National Children's Hospital," he added.
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