Executive, McGimpsey and Trust fail the people of Omagh - Allister

02 March 2009

Traditional Unionist MEP has condemned the withdrawal of acute services from Tyrone County Hospital.

In a statement Jim Allister MEP said:-

“The unseemly haste with which Minister McGimpsey and the Trust pulled down the shutters on acute services at Tyrone County is a disgrace. Whatever the battles over the new hospital in Enniskillen, Omagh should not have been denuded of any services at this stage, years before the new hospital is opened.

I believe, in any redistribution of resources, a paramount rule should be that before a single bed, acute or otherwise, is removed it should be matched by a replacement bed elsewhere. Instead, here we have facilities snatched from Omagh, with no corresponding increase in provision elsewhere. This, added to the impractical and life-threatening distances now involved for those dependent on Tyrone County, amounts to shoddy short-changing of the people of Omagh and district.”

General