The Workers’ Party in the North East have called for communities in the region to unite and fight together for a proper health service for the area and the party has strongly condemned comments made by the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern in which he said a new consultant’s report would remain on the shelf.

Dundalk Workers’ Party chairman Peter Short said that the demand for a proper public health service was too important to be the source of petty bickering between different towns over where a proposed new regional hospital would be built when the government, through Minister Ahern, was putting the matter on hold indefinitely.

“The Workers’ Party in North Louth believe that Ardee would be the best location for the proposed new regional centre but what is even more important is that it is built at all rather than where it is sited.  Already Minister Dermot Ahern is preparing to put the kybosh on this proposed development and the government’s pre-election pledge of ‘centres of excellence’ are merely turning out to be pie-in-the-sky”, said Mr. Short.

“The outright rejection of the just released consultant’s report by Minister Ahern and his insistence that it would be allowed ‘lie on the shelf’ is a disgraceful comment from a supposedly competent and caring minister.  On the one hand he says there is not one red cent in the government’s coffers for such a hospital, but on the other it is throwing away more money on consultant’s reports that it knows in advance will never see the light of day”, said the Workers’ Party spokesman.

Mr. Short said that the past few years under the Fianna Fáil / PD coalition now added to by the Green Party had seen the health service under constant attack in the North East Region in particular with a catalogue of errors, incompetence and budget cuts.  People’s hopes had been built up last year for electoral gain only to be dismissed out of hand by Minister Ahern who has shown his true colours on this issue today.  The people of the North East now know that the Minister has no intention on delivering on health for them”.