A Dublin hospital with a waiting list of more than 4,000 has had to keep a ward closed for half this year because of the new budgetary regime in the health service.
The Mater Hospital has had a 31-bed ward closed since early July because of lack of finances and a shortage of nurses. The ward reopened yesterday but a similar-sized one will be closed for the rest of the year.
Keeping the wards open could have cut the hospital's 4,200-strong waiting list by about 700.
Mr Tom Kehoe, the hospital's patient services manager, said it was a "constant battle" to take patients waiting for elective surgery while also treating accident and emergency (A&E) cases.
It was now commonplace for hospitals to have to cancel appointments for patients on the waiting list to cater for those requiring emergency treatment. It was also the norm for A&E patients to have to wait overnight for a bed to become available.
The closure of St Gabriel's Ward in July - and from yesterday, in its place, the 31-bed Our Lady's Ward - was necessitated because of a legal requirement, introduced this year, for hospitals to stay within their budgets.
The Mater was allocated £66 million by the Department of Health and Children; any overrun would be deducted from its budget for next year, forcing it into even more stringent cutbacks, said Mr Kehoe.
Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick, general secretary of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association (IHCA), said that on the basis of patients staying an average of a week, having a 31-bed ward open for the rest of the year would take about 350 patients off the waiting list.
The IHCA, in a pre-Budget submission to the Minister for Finance, said there were now 34,000 people awaiting hospital treatment, up 26 per cent in 21/2 years.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said the Minister, Mr Cowen, was studying the report of an expert group on the Waiting List Initiative - a special fund established in 1993 to tackle the waiting list problem - which he had recently received.
She said while hospitals were required to remain within budget this year, the overall allocation to the health services was higher in 1998 than in previous years.
The Democratic Left spokes woman on health, Ms Liz McManus, said the length of time on a waiting list could make the difference between life and death.
