St Philip’s Hospital deal is an issue of bad governance and, in such circumstances, the government had a duty to go in front of the Public Accounts Committee and the Auditor General before the deal is signed, AD spokesman Carmel Cacopardo said.

This should be done unless the government was acting in bad faith, he said this morning when addressing a news conference in front of the hospital.

On the government’s claim that it wanted to enlarge the hospital to 280 beds, Mr Cacopardo said that Finance Minister Tonio Fenech knew that this would be impossible to achieve.

He knew that it would not be possible for the Malta Environment and Planning Authority to grant a permit for the hospital to be expanded to 280 beds. There was the logical problem that parking spaces would be a problem since parking was limited and there were very limited possibilities as to where the hospital could be expanded.

If one looked at the building design, one could see that the hospital was built in such a way to maximise as much as possiblethe  area it was built upon.

Minor adjustments, he said, would not give 280 beds and the only way this could be achieved was if the building was demolished and rebuilt.

Mr Cacopardo said it was not true that the government was interested in what would happen in the coming years. All it wanted was to  remove patients from Mater Dei’s corridors in the five months until the election.

He said that no one was implying corruption but bad governance and that hospital owner Frank Portelli was a victim in all this.

Mr Fenech went out of his way in Parliament to explain the pains the government went into to get a good price for the hospital. Dr Portelli was bankrupt and could not  negotiate so he had to take the price he was given.

Mr Cacopardo also said that if, in 2008, the government had been given the right advice it could have easily converted parts of St Luke’s Hospital into a rehabilitation hospital at a much lower price with changes being made to a property it already owned.

For had changes been made to certain halls at St Luke’s Hospital and not to the whole building, €6 million to €8 million would have been enough, he said