PBP condemn Daisy Hill Maternity Services suspension
Following the Southern Trust’s decision to suspend maternity services in Daisy Hill, Marc Mac Seáin spoke to their board meeting condemning any removal of maternity service and demanding a defined viable path to return maternity to Daisy Hill. The service will be formally suspended on the 23rd November.
Mac Seáin, People Before Profit’s Newry & Armagh representative & a member of the SOS Daisy Hill committee said: “The Trust have committed now to a temporary suspension. Suspension has been a byword for removal. We’ve seen this tactic before with Daisy Hill and there has been no plan laid out for returning maternity to Newry.
“It’s unacceptable, and we will need to organise and escalate within the community and workplaces to ensure maternity is brought back, and the hospital’s services aren’t further decimated.
“The collapse of services at Daisy Hill is a managed decline. Its primary cause is austerity, cuts made over decades not just locally but regionally. In the years following the 2008 crash, Trust budgets have frozen in real-terms, forced to raid capital funds for day-to-day spends. Staff specialist training has been significantly bottle necked, and it’s no surprise only one obstetrician was trained across the North within the last year despite massive crises replacing them.
“People will die as a result of these service collapses. Austerity has not worked. Stormont has miserably failed to challenge it and accepted it policy wise through acute service centralisation, first passed by Michelle O’Neill as Health Minister and wider executive in 2016. No cross-border planning, collaboration has taken place to prevent service collapse despite the cross-border reality of healthcare. 83,000 people in the Republic have their closest acute hospital within our Trust. Craigavon and Drogheda are struggling and cannot cope safely with having Daisy Hill piled on them, if patients even make it to them.
“We can only effectively fight back here in Newry, and across the North against these unacceptable healthcare cuts through escalating action amongst huge numbers of people. Healthcare workers in unions are balloting for strikes at the moment, opposition to service cuts should be a frontline priority. Workers and communities are fighting back with huge public strikes in the Republic of Ireland, the French students, the Spanish housing movement. We need to do the same to save Daisy Hill.”