The Health Service Executive (HSE) has said that it is to develop a new A&E department at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
The HSE said yesterday the new department was considered as "a priority project" in its capital development programme for this year. The proposed new unit will be developed on the existing campus of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.
The Irish Times revealed yesterday that an unpublished consultants' report commissioned by the HSE had strongly criticised the existing A&E facilities at Our Lady of Lourdes as being "entirely unfit for current and future purposes".
A spokesman for the HSE said that the proposed new A&E department would be a significantly enhanced and enlarged facility.
The spokesman said it was hoped that work on the project would commence later this year.
The HSE capital programme for the year is expected to be approved by Minister for Health Mary Harney shortly.
The spokesman for the HSE said it recognised that there were difficulties with the current A&E facility at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and that the new unit was considered to be "a priority project".
The spokesman said that a review of future hospital services in the northeast as a whole was currently under way. However, the HSE believed that the new A&E unit would have to be provided at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in the interim.
A consultant in A&E medicine at Our Lady of Lourdes, Dr Conor Egleston, yesterday said the ideal solution was to build a brand new A&E unit "from the ground up" which would be specifically designed to cater for 40,000 to 45,000 attendances per year.
However, he said that could take many years and that the hospital could not afford to wait that long.
Dr Egleston told RTÉ that the HSE interim plan for the unit would see a doubling of floor space at the A&E department as well as the provision of new X-ray facilities and dedicated adult and paediatric waiting areas.
The review of A&E services at Our Lady of Lourdes, carried out by consultants Tribal Secta for the HSE, found that the existing department was far too small for the volume of activity and the amount of services being provided.
It said that to exacerbate this problem the unit was completely ill-equipped to provide appropriate care facilities for patients waiting to be treated.
There are about 37,000 attendances at the A&E department at Drogheda each year.
The Tribal Secta report said that while Our Lady of Lourdes had recently obtained resources from the HSE as part of its A&E initiatives "this support will not enable the range of changes which are required to enable the department to level up to the conditions for delivery of 21st century emergency care".
The report also maintained that there were only two sinks for the entire A&E department and that hygiene and infection issues were "a matter of concern".
The report on Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital was one of 10 commissioned last year by the HSE.
The reports, none of which have been officially published, are also understood to point to a lack of services in the community and work practices in hospitals as some of the causes of over-crowding in A&E units.
