§ MR. J. DEVLINTo ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the decision of the Belfast Corporation sanctioning an arrangement for ten years with the committee of management of the Forster Green Hospital for Consumption, under which arrangement the hospital authorities are to reserve twenty-five beds for patients nominated by the Corporation and approved as suitable by the medical superintendent of the hospital, the Corporation to pay the sum of 35s. per week per bed and two members of the Corporation to be on the board of governors of the hospital; whether he is aware that the Forster Green Hospital is situated in a hollow and was built and equipped over thirty years ago, before the value of an elevated situation and open-air treatment for consumption became recognised by the best authorities on the disease, and at the present time is quite unsuitable for the treatment of tuberculous patients; whether he is aware that the sum agreed upon is 10s. per bed per week in excess of that which was the basis of negotiations between the parties in 1903, and that the opinion of an expert taken by the Corporation on the Forster Green Hospital and site was suppressed by the Corporation Public Health Committee, despite the appeals of several councillors for its publication; and whether, seeing that it is estimated that the cost of establishing a municipal consumptive hospital for Belfast on a suitable site, and equipped in a thoroughly up-to-date manner for twenty-five patients, would be £12,500, which would be cheaper than the present arrangement, and that the present arrangement is part of a scheme to help the Forster Green Hospital until the sum of £40,000, on the subscription of which a large bequest is contingent, is forthcoming, and that the death rate from consumption in Belfast is exceptionally high, and seeing that the present arrangement is opposed to the public interest, he will refuse to sanction it, and order an inquiry into the whole question.
1424 (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Local Government Board have received art application from the Belfast Corporation for sanction to an arrangement with the committee of the Forster Green Hospital on the terms indicated in the first part of the Question. A protest has been made-to the Board on substantially the same grounds of objection as are recited in the Question, and the matter is at present under the Board's consideration.