New hospital opens old wound

The new £276-million hospital outside Enniskillen has opened with all the bells and whistles of a modern health care facility. And along with en-suite rooms for every one of its 300-plus patient beds, the new hospital embeds a geographical anomaly that seems to hold mighty sway with officialdom in this part of Ireland.   

That’s because the new facility is officially known as the South West Acute Hospital, a name that most residents of Fermanagh and Tyrone probably think would be better suited to a facility in Limerick or Kerry.

South West's West Tyrone campus in the north west at Omagh.

But the name does join a growing pantheon of illustrious institutions centred on those northern counties. This includes South West College – with campuses in Omagh, Enniskillen, Dungannon and Cookstown.

There is also BT’s ubiquitous telephone directory for the ‘south west’ region, representing a terrible annual waste of trees for an early twentieth-century form of communications from the company that dominates telecommunications here. The scope of the ‘south-west’ phone directory extends from Belleek as far as Lurgan in the north east corner of Armagh. Those in the know will note that Lurgan is comfortably east of the River Bann.

So apart from being struck by the woeful lack of imagination in naming public institutions and services, here at the Frontier Post we have been wondering what the name of the new hospital signifies. That is, in terms of its location – beside Wolf Lough, which is between Enniskillen town and Trory Roundabout on the Irvinestown road – where exactly is it ‘south west’ of?

Where exactly in the North is south, much less south west?

Such a fixation on place (with precise SatNav directions) could be required when the new facility will incorporate its planned teaching facilities. We are told that, apart from Queen’s University Belfast, this might also include link-ups with the medical faculty in NUI Galway. This raises the prospect that medics dispatched to the South West Acute Hospital might head off south in the direction of Ennis instead of north to the Border and Enniskillen unless provided with precise details.

In our search for a fixed point to determine the south-west nature of the new hospital, naturally we thought of Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, seat of governance and administration. That seemed the natural place to look because it is where matters such as naming hospitals, further education colleges and phonebooks would undergo much high-powered deliberation and intensive examination before a final decision.

But no, Enniskillen town sits at 54.34 degrees latitude, against Belfast’s 54.37. By our reckoning, that puts the new facility on Wolf Lough at 54.35 – almost exactly west of Belfast Lough on the same line of latitude.

So could it be Derry city? No, the new hospital lies almost directly south of the historic centre for those living west of the Bann.

Then it struck us. The new hospital is perched almost on an exact southwest radiant from Omagh (latitude 54.596) in the projected catchment area for its patients. Omagh is actually where many argued – and still believe – the new hospital should have been located all along.

‘South West Acute Hospital’ – talk about rubbing salt in the wound!

Who gives a 'thrupenny damn' for the Irish hare?

HARES would be well advised to remain on the northern side of the Border where they will be cosseted and cared for as a protected native Irish species. By crossing over into the Republic, they face the risk of being harried and hunted down for sport.

It is one of the great anomalies of our land that the two jurisdictions take such a divergent approach to blood sports. A former newspaper colleague in Dublin once observed that the reason for the pervasive political deference to the bloodlust of coursing fans was the annual conclave of Roman collars in the crowd at the National Coursing Meeting in Clonmel – the Hare of the Dogma, if you will!

Clearly the bastions of church and state don't give a thruppeny damn for the indigenous species once depicted on that Irish coin.

Running for its life

A leap of fate

I am not aware if attendance at Clonmel has diminished since the dogs were muzzled in 1993 after an outcry following photos and film footage of a couple of greyhounds pulling a hare limb from limb in a gory display of triumph. Now the dogs can only frighten the wits out of their unfortunate quarry as the baying crowds cheer them on.

For coursing hares and hunting stags and foxes remain the preserve of country pursuits in Ireland with the latter defended as control of vermin. As if other means of culling wildlife were less efficient or humane than a bunch of Hoorah Henrys and Henriettas galloping  their horses over the countryside – the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable, as Oscar Wilde so aptly put it .

Thankfully, badger-baiting has been outlawed in both jurisdictions, although it is still conducted covertly – with cock-fighting and dog-fighting – along the Border by those who would doubtless defend bear-baiting on the pretext that our bear population might otherwise get out of control.

Shane McEntee

As for hare coursing, Dublin’s Minister of State for Agriculture Shane McEntee has defended it robustly, describing it as part of our Irish way of life (contrary to evidence that it was introduced by British Army officers at the Curragh in the early 19^th century.)

‘We have to make sure no one comes near to taking that away from us,’ the Irish junior minister said earlier this month. His remarks were prompted by news that two independent Dáil Deputies will table a Private Members Bill before Easter to have hare-coursing banned, following disclosure that a public park in Milltown, Co. Cork is used for the blood sport.

D.J. Histon

Chief executive of the Irish Coursing Club, D. J. Histon said that a Department of the Environment survey in 2007 found a population of 565,000 hares in Ireland and coursing clubs required 1% of these. That’s 5,650 hares harried and chased merely for the pleasure of the coursing crowd. 

The Hare Preservation Trust, meanwhile, estimates that the population of the Irish species is falling by 25% every three years.

The southern minister of state insists, however, that hares are ‘not an endangered species’.

That will come as news in Northern Ireland where a ban on coursing introduced in 2003 under direct rule, has been continued by subsequent minister such as the DUP’s Arlene Foster, despite trenchant opposition and repeated attempts to overturn it by Sinn Féin.

Now the opposition to hare coursing is strengthened by the worrying news that a number of native wildlife species, including the Irish hare, face extinction if protective action is not taken throughout the island.

The alarm also includes the already depleted red squirrel and red deer which are also in danger of extinction, according to a two-year study by scientists at Queen's University in Belfast (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17099536).

Prof. Ian Montgomery

Led by Prof. Ian Montgomery, the research team at the School of Biological Sciences in Queen’s found that invasive species pose such as threat to indigenous Irish wildlife that some species such as the pygmy shrew have vanished in many parts of the island. Wood mouse numbers have also dropped by 50% in places.

The Queen’s University research team leader described an ‘invasional meltdown’ in the international scientific journal Biological Invasions, claiming that native small mammals in Ireland would die out in at least 80% of their available habitat.

Belfast protester at Queen's University.

Prof. Montgomery stressed the importance of small mammals in the established food chain and urged joined-up action to redress the biological balance.

‘Governments, both north and south of the border, are urged to work together to address the overall problem,’ he said, saying that invasive mammals pose a risk throughout Ireland.

‘We should establish a realistic plan identifying the mammal species that are key to maintaining our unique biodiversity and ecology and those that we should eliminate or control.’

Few could possibly argue that one of the species we must protect and promote is the Irish hare, but its welfare now depends on which jurisdiction it lives in. Like most of the inhabitants of this island, however, hares are unaware of the Border that protects them for now.