The Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has been asked to investigate the management of funds by a Dublin hospital which has several beds idle when patients are on trolleys due to a shortage of beds in other hospitals across the city.
The investigation was sought in a letter to the committee last month, and the chairman of the PAC, Mr John Perry, confirmed yesterday that inquiries had already begun.
He said he had written to the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA), which funds the hospital, for its comments on how money given to Peamount was being spent.
The hospital receives €19.2 million in Government funding every year. It has over 300 beds, 60 for patients with respiratory conditions, including TB, and the remainder are long-stay beds for the intellectually-disabled, elderly and young chronic sick.
Just slightly more than half the beds in the chest hospital have been occupied at any one time over the past four years. That part of the hospital has been allocated €4.8 million of the hospital's overall budget, according to correspondence sent to the PAC and seen by The Irish Times.
The correspondence, dated September 13th, said: "As we write, 20/23 of the beds in this facility are idle. This is occurring at a time when the Dublin and Kildare hospitals' accident and emergency units and their inpatient services cannot cope with current levels of demand."
It also alleged that the hospital had decided to stop admissions to the chest hospital while the hospital remained contracted to provide such services.
"The fact that Peamount hospital is receiving €4.8 million of public monies this year for a service that it is refusing to provide to the public must be of serious concern to the members of the PAC."
The hospital chief executive, Mr Robin Mullan, said last evening Peamount had not terminated any services. However, he acknowledged there were issues around under-utilisation of beds in the chest hospital. They were occupied 57 per cent of the time over the last four years.
Peamount, he added, was seeking to make better use of those beds, and was in talks with the ERHA about making use of them for "non-acute admissions" over the winter.