15 January 2004: A recent situation in Naas Hospital that saw 45 patients awaiting beds in the hospital's new Accident and Emergency department could have been avoided had the decision not been taken recently to close 60 beds at the hospital.

That's the view of Deputy Emmet Stagg, who said it was an 'appalling day for the Irish Health Service'. "Along the East Coast, 200 people were left in various A&E departments without a bed as patients continue to suffer from ward and bed closures, and severe staff shortages," he said in a statement. "It is absolutely ludicrous that the patients left waiting in Naas could have been treated if those 60 beds were simply kept in use."

Deputy Stagg said that bed closures are now running at a rate not seen since the 1980s when the country was in the depths of an economic recession.

"Now, at a time of economic boom and unprecedented investment in the health service, bed closures are commonplace. The Minister for Health has to answer the charge of misleading the public in launching the Health Strategy in a blaze of publicity when there was no funding at all to back it up."