After recent disclosures about the crisis in A&E departments at the Ulster and Royal Hospitals, the Socialist Party has demanded that the Minister for Health and Belfast Health Trust take immediate action to re-open the City Hospital A&E.
Paddy Meehan – South Belfast Socialist Party representative said:
“The Belfast Health Trust argued that an inability to recruit medical staff had led to the City Hospital A&E unit becoming unsafe. In reality, it was consciously run down to provide justification for cuts. It has become clear that – as the Socialist Party and Stop the Cuts Campaign warned – its closure was never meant to be temporary.”
“The absurd waiting times we are now seeing at other units in the Belfast area are truly unsafe. Adequate resources have not been provided to cope with the closure of the City A&E. Minister for Health Edwin Poots and the Belfast Trust must take immediate action to re-open the unit.”
“This situation is reflective of a wider crisis across across health and social care. Lives are being put at risk by the cuts introduced by the Assembly Executive. The union movement needs to get on its feet and put forward a strategy to challenge the health cuts.
The vicious cuts to housing benefits currently being introduced by the Tory/Lib Dem government is a direct attack on the unemployed, the disabled and part-time workers. The cuts will mean a couple on housing benefits that are now entitled to 100% of the average cost renting a two bedroom house in an area will now only be entitled to receive 60% of rent costs.
