The Mid West desperately need this new A&E to open as planned. The current situation is not sustainable for patients or indeed staff. The new A&E will be three and half times the size of the current one, be state of the art when it comes to design and use of technology and meet patient safety and privacy requirements. The recruitment process for the positions in the new A&E is completed.
The management in the hospital do not have the funding to open the A&E but they are doing it anyway. They are right and I support them fully. The Chief Executive of the HSE has on numerous times stated to me that the A&E will open in the final quarter of this year. However, this is medically and morally unacceptable. We cannot have a state of art A&E lying idle while patients have to suffer through an overcrowded, ill equipped A&E that has lost public confidence.