“Saving lives is more important than saving money,” stated Fine Gael member of Monaghan Town Council Tommy Hagan this week when he renewed his call on the Health Service Executive to reintroduce services at Monaghan General Hospital to enable stabilising care to be provided to patients in emergency situations.
Colr Hagan said that recent publicity over a 90-minute delay experienced by a North Monaghan man before an ambulance arrived to deal with his emergency medical situation had brought to light a number of other recent incidents where the response time of ambulances had not been within the required parameters.
These cases – some of which involved children – reinforced the case for emergency services to be reintroduced at Monaghan Hospital, the FG representative stated.
He told the Northern Standard that he had raised the issue with local GPs who were also seriously concerned about the adequacy of the emergency care situation in the Monaghan area.
“Statistics that have come to light in recent weeks show that the problem of unacceptable emergency response times by ambulances is not something confined to this area,” he stated.
“It has emerged that in the region of 5,000 ….