The Eastern Regional Health Authority has confirmed it is considering further curtailing acute services coming into the winter.
Correspondence from the ERHA to the Department of Health in the past month shows the authority's main hospitals are already €28 million over budget this year and that it envisages "significant additional expenditure control measures to reduce our current levels of deficit" through the rest of the year.
A spokeswoman for the ERHA was yesterday playing down the significance of letters, published in yesterday's Sunday Tribune, calling them "the normal letters that go to the Department every month", but confirmed their contents. She said this was "a financially tight year" and the authority was "always concerned about budgets". However, such discussions with the Department centred around "protecting services".
Particular concern is expressed in the correspondence about the financial plight of Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, which the ERHA describes as "proportionately our greatest concern".
"The hospital is likely to incur a deficit of €7 million by year end at current spend levels. We are in a process with the hospital to determine the extent to which they can manage this issue to year end and will continue to discuss with the Department of Health any impact upon services for children arising from this process." The closure of a 25-bed surgical ward was announced in May.
Mr Karl Anderson, chairman of the New Crumlin Hospital Group which is seeking the urgent redevelopment of the hospital, said the Department and the ERHA had known about the "cash crisis for many months". He described as "outrageous" the possibility that there would be further service cutbacks at the hospital.
The Labour Party spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, TD, said it was more clear than ever that hospital services were "in meltdown". She called on the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to "take the lead in dealing with the crisis in the health service and to put to an end the squabbling between the Ministers for Health and Finance so that hospitals are provided with the resources they need".
Fine Gael's deputy spokesman on health, Mr Dan Neville, said he had no doubt that the kind of budgetary over-runs being publicly acknowledged by the ERHA were being replicated throughout the State. "It has been obvious for months that the health boards are facing budget problems and it's been inevitable that a crunch-time would come."
In June, the Southern Health Board said it had run €3 million over its budget in the first four months of the year. In May, Limerick's second-largest acute hospital, St John's Hospital, announced the closure of 40 of its 100 beds for June, July and August in a bid to cut costs, while Tralee General also closed 30 beds for the summer due to budgetary problems.
Further cuts in the eastern region will come on on top of the closure of 250 beds at Dublin's five main teaching hospitals and 32 at James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown, announced at the start of the summer. In May, the Mater Hospital announced plans to cut 163 full-time staff positions, while the ERHA said it planned to cut a further 85 in other hospitals.
A Department spokesman said it was "still in discussion with the ERHA about the rest of the year's budget".
