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Aontú Newry and Armagh representative Roisin Mulgrew has called for an all-Ireland review of healthcare services following Sunday’s rally in Newry to protest about the proposed removal of maternity services from Daisy Hill to Craigavon Hospital. The rally took place exactly ten years after the publication of the Bengoa Report. Mulgrew, who is a member of the SOS Daisy Hill committee, said Daisy Hill serves an entire border region and that health services should be planned for the whole island.
Ms Mulgrew said: “First, I want to pay tribute to the SOS Daisy Hill committee, of which I’m a member, the organisers, the trade union representatives and every ordinary person who came out in dreadful weather to stand up for our hospital.
“People travelled from across Newry, Counties Armagh, Down and Louth because they understand something that seems to have been lost in Stormont: Daisy Hill is not simply a hospital serving one town. It is a vital hospital for an entire border region.
“Newry sits on the Belfast-Dublin corridor. Daisy Hill serves communities in south Armagh, south Down and Newry, with neighbouring communities across the border in Louth and Monaghan. Yet our health services are planned as though the border marks the edge of the world.”
She also pointed to the timing of the rally in relation to the Bengoa Report, which was published a decade ago.
“Yesterday marked exactly ten years since the publication of the Bengoa Report on 25 October 2016. A decade after Stormont embarked on its programme of health transformation, thousands of people were on the streets of Newry fighting to protect maternity services at Daisy Hill. That should tell us something about how that vision of transformation has worked for communities like ours.
“Of course healthcare needs reform. Nobody is suggesting that we preserve every failing aspect of the existing system. But reform must begin with the needs of patients and communities, not with an assumption that services must be organised within the boundaries of the northern state.
“We need an all-Ireland, clinically led review of healthcare provision, examining hospitals, staffing, emergency care, maternity services and patient access across the island. It must recognise Newry’s central position between Belfast and Dublin and the potential for genuine cross-border cooperation.
“In the meantime, the immediate priority is clear. The Health Minister and Southern Trust must exhaust every option to recruit and retain the staff needed to protect maternity services at Daisy Hill. We should also be working towards restoring emergency general surgery and strengthening Daisy Hill as a fully functioning acute hospital.”
Ms Mulgrew also commented on the political parties involved in the review process.
“I can understand why the DUP, UUP and Alliance were comfortable with a review designed around the healthcare system of the North. Their political outlook is centred on Belfast, and much of their electoral strength lies east of the Bann. But I find it profoundly disappointing that Sinn Féin and the SDLP, parties which claim to believe in an all-Ireland future, accepted the same narrow framework.
“I do not believe they set out to damage hospitals like Daisy Hill. I believe they were persuaded by the ‘experts’, the impressive reports, the language of transformation and the pressure to appear responsible. They accepted the boundaries of the system as the boundaries of the solution.
“That is why I am more disappointed than angry. Because the fundamental question should have been asked ten years ago: why are we planning the future of healthcare for six counties when we should be planning it for the whole island?
“And there is a question Sinn Féin in particular must answer. In 2016, its Health Minister Michelle O’Neill launched a ten-year programme to transform healthcare within the North. Sinn Féin has also repeatedly told us that Irish unity is achievable within a decade.
“Which vision were they actually planning for? Were we supposed to spend ten years reorganising healthcare within the six counties, achieve Irish unity and then begin another enormous exercise to integrate healthcare across Ireland?”
Ms Mulgrew concluded: “Ten years ago, Stormont promised transformation. Yesterday, the people of Newry demanded something much more basic: the right to have their babies born in their own hospital.
“We do not need another ten years of planning healthcare around partition. We need to start planning healthcare around the people of Ireland.”
