Want to drive a diver around the bend? Take away the Republic's only public recompression chamber and wait until he has an accident. It's not a very funny joke but then again the state of our health services isn't very funny either.

Last week the Health Service Executive West announced that the recompression chamber at University Hospital Galway had closed due to HSE concerns that it does not meet international standards. The chamber, which is 30 years old, is to be replaced in September, we are told.

The chamber is the only nationwide decompression service for divers. It is largely a voluntary service, run with technical assistance from The Galway Sub-Aqua Club with medical cover. The other facilities are privately operated.

So, why, considering its importance in treating decompression illness, as well as other conditions, has it closed, without any apparent back-up cover in the interim?

As far back as 2002, the medical professionals operating the chamber on a voluntary basis warned the Western Health Board that they would not be able to continue their work if the chamber was not modernised. They had been campaigning since 1994 for funding, with no success.

Meanwhile, a report by an international expert on recompression chambers in 2003 recommended the closure of the facility on safety grounds. He also criticised the lack of modern monitoring facilities in the chamber, finding it too small to treat serious decompression illness.

The HSE West announced in 2005 that it was to upgrade the facility. It approved ?2 million for a new building at the hospital.

So, why has it taken six years for the Department of Health to do, well, absolutely nothing? Why is it that funding announced in 2005 has not come on stream until 2008, leaving us in a position that we are without a recompression chamber for nine months, presuming the replacement goes to plan, presuming the replacement goes ahead at all? Why is it a new chamber could not be built so that the closure of the old one coincided with the opening of the new one?

In the absence of answers to these questions, it's unclear whether the fault lies with HSE West. This is a national facility and therefore a national issue. The only sure thing is that we now seem to be in the dangerous position that we may be left wanting when an accident happens.

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