Micheál Martin points to Dublin’s support for Altnagelvin cancer and cardiac facilities as ‘very significant for people in Donegal’
Micheál Martin said Dublin’s support for the cancer centre and stent unit at Altnagelvin was ‘very significant for people in Donegal’ after Peadar Tóibín said cross-border cooperation on health was ‘minute and glacial’.
The Aontú leader raised the issue of cross-border health care as the Dáil resumed after the summer recess.
"We should have a very simple policy of treating people in the closest hospital they need in this country. It would be of benefit to all people in this country. The Taoiseach should not tell me that we have, at this stage, cross-Border healthcare. It is minute and glacial. It is not as transformative as what unity would bring,” said Deputy Tóibín.
Responding the Taoiseach said: "The Government and I have established the most dynamic and consequential North-South investment, development and research programme in the island's history. We have secured a budget of €2 billion. As of today, we have allocated more than €1 billion of our shared island fund to projects that actually change things, that bring people together and that give us a greater insight into the reality of life on our island than at any time since partition.”
Deputy Martin pointed particularly to the North West Cancer Centre and Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PPCI) cardiac centre in Derry.
Addressing Deputy Tóibín, the Taoiseach said: “The Deputy has limited in his commentary the level of engagement North and South on health. I do not know whether he has been to Altnagelvin and the cancer centre or the cardiac centre...It is very significant for people living in Donegal.”
He added: “The Deputy has just dismissed it. It is a very significant investment by the Republic in the cancer centre in the North and also in cardiac care so that if a person in Donegal needs heart treatment immediately, they can get it in 20 minutes if they live on the Inishowen Peninsula.”
However Deputy Tóibín said: “Patients are still likely to go to Galway.”
During the exchanges the Aontú leader called on the Taoiseach to press the British Prime Minister Andy Burnham on a border poll.
Under the terms of the NI Ireland Act 1998 a British Secretary of State must call a unity referendum ‘if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that NI should cease to be part of the UK and form part of a united Ireland’.
Mr. Burnham caused controversy recently by stating a border poll was ‘off the table’.
Mr. Tóibín noted that Chris Bryant, the recently appointed Secretary of State for the North had said that this was an ‘obscure mechanism’ and refused to put detail on how it can be triggered.
"Why is it that people who have the right to vote are being denied the understanding of what makes that vote likely to happen? Why is it that the Taoiseach will not even ask that question of Andy Burnham?” asked Deputy Tóibín.
The Taoiseach said he would raise legacy, the reform of the GFA institutions and ‘the British-Irish situation more generally’ with Mr. Burnham when he meets him.
He said he was satisfied with what the government is doing to ‘develop the potential for unity’.