Proposed change to name of Our Lady of Lourdes rings very hollow

AT times it seems as if there is an attempt to re-write part of Irish history.

If some people have their way, the place of the Catholic Church in Ireland will be erased from our history.

The proposal to rename Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda might be the thin end of the wedge, but if allowed go unhindered could see more and more names being changed around the country.

Where would it stop, would schools such as St Malachy’s NS, St Furseys NS, Oliver Plunketts NS be renamed with more secular titles, would Marion Park have to be renamed, St Alphonsus Road?

Here in Dundalk there might not be too many weeping at the proposal to rename Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital for the fact is that the hospital has a poor reputation after a number of scandals associated with the hospital and its designation as the de-facto regional hospital, meant a downgrading for Louth County Hospital, which is and always will be a sore point in the town.

Parochialism and geographical bias, when it comes to Dundalk versus Drogheda is always a hot topic of debate which never grows old.

Just recently we had Cllr Pio Smith vote against the disposal of land in Dundalk to accommodate the new stadium for Louth GAA as he felt that the stadium shouldn’t be moved from Drogheda. This was despite the fact that impasse of developing the Gaelic Grounds in Drogheda had dragged on and on for years with no progress and that all the GAA clubs in Louth had unanimously voted in favour of the Dundalk proposal.

Making a stand against the inevitable may well win Cllr Smith some votes in the upcoming local election when he stands in Drogheda, but really it is hard to fathom his position when the decision to choose a location outside of Drogheda was already made for very understandable and logical reasons.

But back to the latest proposal to rename Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital which emerged in December and has been greeted by a local campaign, which saw 1,000 people march to the hospital on Sunday.

The management led bid to get the name of the hospital changed - to Drogheda University, Drogheda Regional or Drogheda General Hospital - features as a wider part of the hospital’s new multi million euro extension opening, a big, bright future ahead, a new name and vision the goal.

Yet there is no funding for a second x-ray machine in the hospital. Patients still are regularly queuing on trolleys in the Emergency Department, although it must be recognised that the number of patients forced to wait in such circumstances has noticeably fallen since the opening of the extended Emergency Department.

I am minded of a old saying, ‘all fur coat and no knickers’ - with management tweaking on the edges, on soft focus, issues such as branding and names, when there are more fundamental challenges at foot.

Some feel there are other reasons - be it linked to the introduction of abortion legislation - for the proposed name change, but not for the first time in recent years we see elements within Irish society keen to remove all traces and linkages with our traditional Catholic past.