A North Eastern Health Board steering group has recommended that round-the-clock emergency medical admissions be restored to Monaghan General Hospital.
The group's report, published yesterday, also proposes major investment in additional beds and diagnostic-imaging services at Monaghan and Cavan hospitals which have been beset by controversy in recent years.
The plan will cost around €4.5 million to implement. The group report proposes that at least five non-consultant anaesthetists be recruited as a matter of urgency to allow Monaghan hospital to go back "on call".
At present the North Eastern Health Board ambulance service must take emergency patients, even those from Monaghan town, to other hospitals such as Cavan or Drogheda. Local campaigners have claimed that this requirement is placing patients' lives at risk.
Under the group's proposals, an additional 10 beds would be provided at Monaghan, with 19 more at Cavan General Hospital.
It has also proposed that joint departments of medicine and surgery be set up to cover Cavan and Monaghan hospitals and that new protocols be drawn up to govern admissions. The report recommends that "selective" elective, or non-urgent, surgery should be carried out at Monaghan.
It proposes that a consultant surgeon should be present on the Monaghan site daily from Monday to Friday with "a commitment to providing elective surgery, endoscopy, outpatient services and consultation on inpatients and outpatients as required".
It is also proposed that major emergency and elective surgery should continue to be carried out at Cavan Hospital. The Cavan surgical unit has come under intense scrutiny following the death in February of nine-year-old Frances Sheridan, three weeks after an appendix operation there.
Independent TD for Monaghan Mr Paudge Connolly last night welcomed the recommendations as "a step in the right direction".
