Costello Organises Protest against Mater Hospital Bed Closures

10 April 2003

by Cllr Joe Costello

The Mater Hospital is facing one of the biggest crises in its history through lack of funding. Two wards comprising 115 beds are threatened with closure, that is over 20% of the Hospital’s total bed capacity. The jobs of nurses, doctors, consultants and hospital staff are at risk. Redundancies are inevitable. Patients who are waiting for serious operations and vital treatments will find their already long waiting lists getting longer. Patients will not be able to access other public hospitals in Dublin either. Beaumont, St James’, James Connolly Memorial and St Vincent’s Hospital are all suffering severe cutbacks and closure of beds as well. The Minister for Health, Mícheal Martin, is bewildered by the crisis. The Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevey, doesn’t care and the Taoiseach Bertie Aherne stands idly by. In the meantime, ordinary people suffer. The Labour Party is campaigning to stop the closure of beds in the Mater Hospital. We need your support. Every Saturday from 12 noon to 1.00 p.m. we are gathering outside the gates of the Mater Hospital on the North Circular Road to demonstrate our opposition to bed closures and the loss of services in the Mater Hospital. Please come along once a week for even a few minutes to display your support. Secondly, we are organising a petition to fight the closures. Please fill in our petition (available from (joe.costello@oireachtas.ie) and send it to Joe Costello TD, Dáil Eireann, Kildare Street, Dublin 2 or drop it in to any of Joe's Advice Centres.