St Philip’s Hospital remains an alternative to Mater Dei’s hospital bed capacity problem, hospital owner Frank Portelli said, adding that it didn’t make any sense that a solution to the problem existed but was being ignored.

He said that the St Philip’s issue had turned into a political football.

“As overcrowded emergency rooms and long patient queues are a familiar sight at Mater Dei Hospital, St Philip’s Hospital, which hosts a number of vacant beds, could easily solve the ongoing problem,” he said.

Dr Portelli was replying to a questions posed by this portal whether the new administration had expressed any interest in continuing discussions on the use of St Philip’s by the government as a hospital. Negotiations had started by the previous administration and the hospital owners, but the then Labour Opposition had strongly objected to the idea.

“The ball is in the government’s court,” Dr Portelli said.

In October last year, a PN-led government had said that the signing of the St Philip’s Hospital deal would have gone ahead, but this never took place and the idea was shelved when the election campaign started.

The proposed agreement would have seen the government pay €850,000 per year with an option to buy the 100-bed hospital for €12.4 million from the third year.

At the time, Dr Portelli had questioned why the St Philip's contract had to be approved by Parliament when a number of service contracts which ran into millions were concealed from public scrutiny.