14/03/2026
Community Action
On a normal Saturday in Buncrana, you would not see this number of people on the street outside the Community Hospital.
Something was stirring, or something got their goats up, as they were rightly very interested in every word that was being spoken through the microphone.
The only public representative that was missing was the Minister of State, Charlie McConalogue; the rest of them spoke against the delays in repairs and upgrades now being experienced at the Hospital.
The job has been held up, not by money, as that has been allocated; no, it is being held up by incompetence, the inability to get the job done.
We must not let it happen here; what is happening to the New Children's Hospital in Dublin?
I am sure this was on the minds of the people gathered outside the Buncrana Community Hospital today.
Later, as Noel King and I talked about the sad situation over a pint in The Cottage, he told me about his cousin Una, who is in a Care Unit up in Letterkenny. She can't understand why her friends are not coming to talk to her; if she were down in Buncrana, she would have regular visitors. This is a big loss to her well-being and recovery, he said.
He said it was tragic because the HSE is holding back the already allocated 1.3 million Euro.
Surely this is a combination of bad management, incompetence and the lack of political will on the part of the politicians to keep the pressure on the HSE to get the job done.
We have seen in the past where the politicians vote to cut funds that will provide the means to get the job done, and then, when it is not done, they are the first out to complain that the job is not getting done, and we are the mugs who accept their crocodile tears.
Going by what happened today in Buncrana, I would say that the eyes are on them this time, and they had better deliver or else.
Tony Grant, March 2026
