There is only one real Dar Malta, and it is not the drab, asbestos-filled building in Brussels. No, the real Dar Malta is the hospital.

Go to the hospital at any time, on any day, and there you meet the real Malta. It is the biggest melting pot of our society. Any visit there, as a patient or as a visitor, quickly shows that sooner or later, all Malta’s inhabitants pass through it. After all, was it not the Emergency Department that reported having to treat more than the number of people residing in Malta over a one-year period?

The hospital is not only Malta’s most used facility, it is also Malta’s most loved one. True, there was a time in the medium past, when social division was rife and it was thought infra dig to go to the public hospital. Those were the days when private hospitals were the rage and when, in the line of the schools issue and the language divide, people split according to which hospital they chose.

There were also concerns expressed, both in print and more in private, about the hospital food, its cleanliness in general and the level of service one received.

Some of these concerns, as we shall see, still exist today. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that any concerns notwithstanding, (and the fact that it is free), the hospital is massively favoured by the far greater mass of Maltese, who make it their home (with all the pluses and minuses this implies) and who do feel at home in it.

There are fewer restrictions at the hospital these days, and things are markedly smoother: no more those draconian checks at the gates, with people asking you what your business was. Nor the order imposed by some authoritarian government of no more than two people with a patient, an order praiseworthy in intention but damningly difficult to implement. And people somehow do get to respect the needs and sensibilities of others – well, most of the time.

The staff are good, even if underpaid, and the continued stream of people coming out of the Institute of Healthcare is producing a new generation of health carers instead of the old untrained nursing aides, etc., of the past.

The hospital, this Dar Malta, is now about to undergo a very serious operation itself. In around six months’ time, it will begin the enormously complex operation of relocating to Mater Dei.

Some things, such as the building, the furniture, are already in place. Others are still awaited, most notably the highly sensitive issue of the IT system to run the place. And other issues are still pending, such as the issues that involve human resources and salary scales. Over and above everything else, there is the very big issue of the medical and health budget, which seems to increase week after week, and the very question as to whether such a hospital can ever be financially sustainable if it remains steadfastly and resolutely free.

Come 1 July, we could have a very different scenario.

We can have the usual Maltese opening, with fireworks and parties, and then we begin to realise that a lot of things are not ready at all. Hiccups start to occur, people grumble, and any feel-good factor for which the government was hoping disintegrates in the summer heat.

Or else, as we did for CHOGM, we rush to the finishing line and then, having spent all our energy and money, we try hard to skimp and save for the next few years. Which means, once again, unpainted walls, chairs lacking rubber feet, creaking apparatus, equipment lying unused because of a lack of money for maintenance.

Maybe we will get a new hospital but old work practices – rendered even more pathetic by the fact that this will be happening in a brand new hospital – with some of the issues that still bedevil the hospital today: a lack of general cleanliness, daily schedules that date back to pre-war times and that are still followed because things have always been like that, etc.

The nearer one gets to opening day, the more one realises that rather than being the boost in popularity the government hopes it will be, this could well become the tombstone of the present administration: “Here lies the Gonzi government, big in dreams, small in achievements”.

Up until quite recently, the hospital’s gestation period was under FMS, then it was under an inter-ministerial committee, now it is under a different configuration. Usually, such gestation disorders breed monsters. Here’s hoping that the government gets its act together in these few remaining months and that the changeover period is as smooth and seamless as possible.

After all, it’s Dar Malta – our house – that we’re

moving.