Funding for a new diabetes day centre at Sligo University Hospital is still awaited even though tender documents are ready to be issued to contractors.
There have been complaints about the delay in funding, with diabetes patients at the hospital currently having to attend at prefabs.
Earlier this week, Fianna Fail local election candidate Donal Gilroy, who’s also joint chair of the Sligo branch of Diabetes Ireland, condemned the delay in providing the funding.
He says prefabs currently being used for diabetes patients have no planning permission and are unsafe.
In a response to Ocean FM News, hospitals group Saolta pointed out that in a Dail debate at the end of March, the HSE advised that the tender documents were ready.
It also said it is intended to go to construction in 2019.
The unit is expected to be operational in 2020.
However, it added that funding of all projects is subject to the availability of capital funding.
The prefabs currently being used at the hospital are beside what is now a construction site, where the new mental health unit at Sligo University Hospital is being built, with claims that windows cannot be opened at times because of the dust.
With diabetes services in Sligo catering for people in Sligo, Leitrim, South Donegal and West Cavan, the calls for the necessary funding are to set to increase in advance of much-awaited publication of the HSE capital spending plan.
And among the chief concerns is that it will not be a victim of the cost overruns for the new National Children’s Hospital being built in Dublin.
