Campaigners call for Downe Hospital plan

Campaigners call for Downe Hospital plan

19 March 2025

STORMONT Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has been urged to demand a new development plan is drawn up for the Downe Hospital.

The Down Community Health Committee wants him to ensure the plan is immediately commissioned by the South Eastern Trust which is responsible for the Struell Road facility.

The appeal to Mr Nesbitt comes as campaigners are preparing to formally launch a district-wide petition for the return of the Downpatrick hospital’s 24-hour emergency department.

Campaigners have written to the minister and said it is a “matter of continuing concern” for the local community that there is no evidence of significant additional investment in services at the Downe, despite it being an excellent modern facility, easily accessible for staff and patients alike and well placed to facilitate the delivery of additional services. 

In his letter health committee chairman Eamonn McGrady said he knew Mr Nesbitt fully appreciated the good work at the Downe Hospital. 

“It was always intended to be an enhanced local hospital, reflecting the needs of our community and the difficulties we experience, even in terms of transport infrastructure, when seeking to obtain our rightful entitlement to healthcare,” Mr McGrady remarked.

Mr McGrady said while the Downe got its fair share of platitudes, it was time for it to get its fair share of investment and services.

“You will appreciate our frustration as we hear of more and more investment in almost every hospital but the Downe,” the letter continued.

“It is particularly frustrating for us that ‘temporary’ cuts to services due to the Covid pandemic, including emergency department services, have not been reversed. The commitment to return all such services to our hospital must now be honoured.”

Campaigners say they are respectfully suggesting that a development plan for the Downe Hospital should be demanded from the South Eastern Trust as a top priority.

“It should be developed in full and meaningful consultation with key stakeholders, including our local community, with the Department of Health overseeing the process,” said Mr McGrady.

“We would urge you [Mr Nesbitt] to look carefully, as I am sure you already have, at the proliferation of bureaucratic structures, health trusts, quangos and such like and to commission an urgent review with a rapid reporting deadline, on how costs could be reduced and effectiveness and efficiency be improved.”

Mr McGrady said administrative costs can and should be reduced, not frontline services.

He said it was also a “matter of serious concern” that during the recent consultation on the reconfiguration of hospital services, the consultation meeting for the South Eastern Trust area was held at the Ards Hospital.

“This lent some weight to the view held by many people in our area that there was to be no meaningful engagement with the people of Mid and East Down,” he contended.

“Just before the end of the consultation, quarterly emergency department waiting time statistics were published, but on the map demonstrating the location of the various ED and urgent care facilities, the Downe Hospital Type 2 Emergency Department was not included.”

Mr McGrady said Mr Nesbitt will appreciate how campaigners feel about that omission and the message it conveyed, particularly at such a sensitive time.

The health group chairman’s letter also highlights the “serious concern” felt by the community across Mid and East Down at what appears to be a “distinct acceleration of the centralisation process much loved by Health Service bureaucrats, leading to an ongoing reduction in accessibility to services for local communities across Northern Ireland, especially over recent years”.

Mr McGrady said the so-called “golden hospital agenda” which is now 40 years old, still seems to be the policy of the Department of Health.

He said this was “despite the very concerning and ongoing decline in the standard of service delivery, reflected in dreadful waiting times for outpatient appointments, the emergency department chaos and the failures to meet key targets for many elective procedures”.

Mr McGrady said transformation and reform should be used as an opportunity to address healthcare inequalities, particularly those between rural areas and urban areas, but it’s not happening.

“The centralists continue to centralise, even though it is clear that is a fundamentally flawed strategy,” he declared.

Mr McGrady said the undue concentration of ED services in Belfast and in locations which benefit from excellent transport infrastructure links to Belfast, such as Lisburn or Antrim, is only possible at the expense of services to rural communities, such as those in Mid and East Down as “Belfast Parish Pump politics” demand the duplication of services in the Greater Belfast area.  

“This concentration is also a shameful and costly reflection of the cost of segregation within the community,” said Mr McGrady.

He said Mr Nesbitt was acutely aware of the issues pertaining to ambulance response times generally and may well be aware of the particularly poor response times in Downpatrick and Newcastle and the vast country areas around them.

“These must now be addressed and the recent NI Audit Office Report is truly shocking and I know the Minister will be greatly concerned by it,” the letter continued.

“It seems that even if the need for equality of access to services in rural areas is perceived generally in Stormont and its Departments as a laudable objective, it does not appear to influence, in any significant way, Departmental decision making.”