Mater Dei Hospital has had its fair share of controversy, but the story over the flaws in concrete structures at the accident and emergency department by far eclipses all other issues in its gravity and far-reaching implications.

Two core stress tests done ahead of plans to build two new wards over the A&E department have revealed that in some places the concrete structures are too weak to support additional wards. A third test, done in the UK, has confirmed the findings of the first two.

A fault of this nature could hardly have been expected in a normal building, let alone in a €600 million state-of-the-art hospital built to resist earthquakes. No wonder people are at a loss to understand how this could have happened in a project that would have called for the observance of the most rigorous checks during all phases of construction.

The details known so far are shocking enough, but, clearly, the story has yet to be unravelled in the investigations that will now be carried out to establish who failed to play by the rules. Is this the only fault there is in the hospital building or are there more elsewhere? Again, this can only be established through a site survey of the hospital that is to be carried out by a foreign firm. Until this is done, it is pointless speculating over whether or not there are other structural weaknesses elsewhere in the building.

However, the weaknesses found at the A&E department are bad enough as, according to Health Minister Konrad Mizzi, the concrete used was “significantly below standard and extremely weak in certain areas”. An alternative site would now have to be found for the building of the two new wards. The work is being co-financed by the European Union, and the government is bound to complete the project by not later than June 2015, or lose about €9.5 million.

The nurses’ union has been told by the ministry that there were no indications of risk at the A&E department. If this is the case, there is no cause for alarm. Temporary emergency measures are to be taken this week to reinforce the defective columns at the department.

The minister has said that forensic engineers have also been brought in to help the police in their investigations and to look at the whole hospital structure. The minister stated the obvious when he said there had to be political, technical and contractual accountability. It would be a scandal if whoever is responsible for the faults were to go scot free.

Meanwhile, concurrently with the story over the fault at the A&E department, the parliamentary secretary for health, Chris Fearne, has announced that 400 additional beds would be spread out across healthcare facilities as part of a reorganisation exercise.

This sounds a bit ambitious but Mr Fearne has presumably done his homework and one must therefore wait for the end result of his plan. He said they were putting an extra bed in each ward and in some cases they were even demolishing walls to make more space.

This may be better than leaving patients to be treated in corridors, but, even so, would it not lower the standard of the hospital service? Other more acceptable solutions would appear to be needed to stop the health service deteriorating.

This, and the new problem over the concrete structures, require clear thinking and quick action.