*Dr Tom Nolan (FG). Photograph: John Mangan
SEEKING A SEAT in Dáil Éireann is one last roll of the dice for Dr Tom Nolan (FG) in battling to overturn the decision to downgrade Ennis Hospital.
Returning an accident and emergency department to Ennis is “completely realistic”, the Kilrush GP said. The HIQA review is “indicating second thoughts on the whole process that’s dominated the health agenda here for the last fifteen years” and “the need is obviously there through the awful tragic events that are happening all the time in UHL”.
Dr Nolan had been an active volunteer of the Ennis Hospital Action Group for up to seven years which fought unsuccessfully against the removal of the A&E in Ennis. “The signal that the downgrading was coming went out in 2003 with the Hanly Report which set about reconfiguring, smaller hospitals, in the case of our area, Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s, the process that led to the final closure of acute services in 2009, obviously took that length of time because I was active, as were other people in the Ennis Hospital Action Group, which stalled, frustrated, debated, and, highlighted the, problems, that were coming on foot of the reconfiguring for Ennis and for the people of Clare”.
He added, “I’m back in the arena after all these years, because first of all, I was invited asked by Fine Gael to to stand because Joe Cooney had opted out, they needed a candidate and somebody with a high profile in the area of the hospital, which they felt was a topic that would be relevant to the election and I said yes because my colleagues in the former hospital action room said it’s an opportunity to revisit the, our failure to, secure A&E acute services for Clare”.
Alongside Peadar McNamara and ex Cllr Christy Curtin (IND), the voluntary action group “just ran out of energy, we were up against city hall, basically, along the way, I would have sat down in the same room, I remember, in March 2004, with the then Minister for Health, Micheál Martin and with Timmy Dooley sitting beside him and insisting that the safety mechanisms would be required to reconfigure as they intended, the services in our area would be put in place before they proceed to implement them and one of those, not least, was as Hanley recommended that at least a 50% increase in GPs would be required because of the increased service delivery that would be required of them and, of course, that never happened. Unfortunately Micheál Martin and Timmy are on the wrong side of history here, after that harangue that I had with Micheál Martin, Timmy Dooley congratulated me on putting up a good fight, When in fact I felt Timmy this was your job to put up a good fight for the people”.
Two years ago, Tom joined Fine Gael “because this idea that that I felt there were too many splinter groups, individual, independent groups that the centre could not hold politically and that Ireland would be increasingly difficult to govern, I had no sense for a second that I would end up in a situation of representing Fine Gael in an election but, as I said, the final, deciding factor was that there was an opportunity here to get A&E services back, I would say A&E services appropriate for Clare’s requirements back and, there’s no doubt that has to happen”.
For ten years, he was an Independent member of Kilkee Town Council. “We’re talking about a small town that was struggling with extinction, which has happened almost in that in that there’s very few people in Kilkee, there’s a huge loss of population in Kilkee as a result of the seaside renewal scheme which, where all told, was wonderful”.
“I’ve been involved in social agitation, I guess, for some time. On my first day at work, I was told to ‘go home we are closing the hospital’ in 1976, and myself and four other junior hospital doctors came to hospital in to the medical department in Tullamore hospital open, without consultant support for two and a half months and shamed the then Midland Health Board into appointing a consultant and actually saved the medical department of Tullamore Hospital from closure”.
He continued, “I hope I can fill the jersey of accomplishing the goal of the Ennis Hospital Action Committee, that in the first place I said I would resist this, because it’s wrong, this is just wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels but it’s the reason why I’m in it because there is, social injustice, medical injustice, we like to call it, and even political injustice, because nobody in Clare wanted this and it’s been inflicted on them on full of bad medical evidence, and that wasn’t allowed to be wasn’t allowed to be heard, basically, or wasn’t listened to, and particularly, I will go back to the central point, that the Government of the day proceeded with the reconfiguration without there being the appropriate safeguards in mind and that is something I would call out regardless of what party I’m in, or for that matter what position I’m in within a party”.
Throughout the 1990s, he was part of the Cross Loran C Action Group in Loop Head who staved off Government efforts to erect the 720 ft Loran C mast. “The Loran-C was an aid to navigation which would benefit French nuclear submarines in the Bay of Biscay, and it was put in Loop Head, it was of no benefit locally. There was issues potentially about non ionizing radiation that could damage people’s health, it would be unsightly and it would be permanent. It was entrusted to Irish Lights to deliver on the installation of this thing and essentially we argued that Irish Lights didn’t have, which are an English group, didn’t have the permission of this country to install anything other than a buoy, a beacon or a lighthouse and the Supreme Court, because it did go into the Supreme Court, decided that this Loran-C facility was not a buoy, a beacon or a lighthouse so the Oireachtas had to sit and widen the, spectrum of facilities that Irish Lights were, allowed to operate in Ireland,” he recalled.
He credits his parents with fostering his sense of social justice. “I’ve always been aware of the position I am in and the position that my patients are in, not just in respect of their health needs, I found increasingly in the latter years that I do have a vocation in medicine, there might have been times when I struggled to survive in medicine because I was in a very disadvantaged situation when I started here, that the struggle to survive might have not allowed you to concentrate on why you become a doctor. In more recent years when I’ve had the time to be involved in a more reflective type of practice, I think I’ve engaged a lot more with patients, and I really wish that my colleagues would be given that opportunity, because, all doctors really want to do good at the start, but, life hardens them. I particularly feel sorry for a lot of the junior hospital doctors currently being faced with awful pressures in the work, particularly and nurses and other caregivers face with awful situations, particularly in Limerick where they have pressures external to the provision of healthcare intruding on their expression of their vocation”.
Clare elected doctors to the Dáil in 1992 with Moosajee Bhamjee (LAB) and in 2016 Michael Harty (IND). He accepts that the county’s health services didn’t see a visible improvements as a result. “That’s true. You know, frankly, I don’t remember much about 1992 other than I was so involved at that stage as the medical doctor to the county football team, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be involved in that that what Dr Bhamjee was doing wasn’t really of concern to me. In respect of Dr Michael Harty’s run at it, I think he highlighted an important thing, and that is that the basis of the no doctor, no village campaign was to highlight the difficulties that a doctor in a village or in a rural community has in basic survival and then in delivery of services and that if the doctor hasn’t got the safeguards and support, the doctor will leave and when the doctor leaves that patients may see what we can’t bring up our children here, there isn’t any doctor and they will drift into bigger towns and cities where there is a presence of medical people and certainly, the campaign highlighted that, what happened afterwards because Michael perhaps was an individual in running as an Independent in effect, and that was the rock on which that perished. I’m not independent. I am with a strong party. I have been given the invitation to run with a party that is prepared to listen to what I have to say”.
“It is time West Clare had a TD, I’m not saying it has to be me but I’d like it to be me, I think I have the vision, the energy to deliver on the first part of it, that is the security inherent in having good, acute medical services, both at hospital level and at community level and secondly, because I have huge interest in the wonderful, environment in which we live for the amenity options that it presents to people and also how those amenity options can bring communities together. I would say one thing further, that is around I mentioned briefly there, graduate retention, I think doctors should appreciate the emergency status of medical care provision in this country before they decide to become doctors and if they do decide to become doctors, that it would be part of their sense of duty to their country that they will give something back for two, three years after they qualify, it should not be necessary to compel doctors to work in the country that has given them their degree, but it should be part of the ethos of serving in, an aspiring medical doctor, that he or she would see that as their first calling, you know, to become a doctor to their own community”.
Dr Tom Nolan
Occupation – Medical doctor
DOB – 20/05/52
Party – Fine Gael
Top priority – The provision of A&E services in Ennis Hospital, fully staffed, fully supported, the improved provision of GP services in the community.
