Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. With regard to question 29, the plans to increase the numbers of school dentists in Cork, the reply stated that 48 dentists are currently employed in the school dental service of Cork ICA and that in the past two years, four to five dentists have left the dental service. Have those dentists been replaced and, if not, when will they be replaced?

Prior to those dentists leaving, a problem arose in Youghal where children were not being seen until they were in secondary school. That gap must be addressed. It was identified recently as a problem by this committee. Do the witnesses have plans in place to rectify that?

Regarding medical cards issued on discretionary grounds, my question related to cancer patients. Aside from the costs of medication, cancer patients are constantly cold. The heating must be on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When people fill in the income and means section of a form, they do not know how much time their partner who is on that income will have to take off in the course of a year to provide assistance to their partner in the home or bring them to hospital appointments. They have to take off a good deal of time for which they are not paid.

There also are travel costs to and from hospital appointments and if there are young children in the equation, they sometimes must be taken out of the home environment, thereby entailing additional child care costs. If someone is very ill in the home, no account is taken of the need to buy in ready-made meals sometimes, because people are too ill to cope with cooking. This is the human cost and no box on any form will take that into account. In itself, this provides undue hardship and I believe people do not take into account this side of it. I will conclude my comments on cancer services by noting that, as a parent who lost a child to cancer stated on radio yesterday, the medical card is the most important thing to the parents of a child with cancer. We owe it to the children of the country to protect them.

Finally, I refer to the ambulance service in Cork. As the witnesses are aware, two tragedies occurred in Midleton within a short time. In common with everyone else, I wish to extend my deep sympathies to the families. However, I wish to point out that just 12 hours before the death of Vakaris Martinaitis on the bank holiday weekend, there had been an incident in Youghal in which a man was assaulted in an unprovoked attack. He was left seriously injured and lying in a pool of blood on the street, but the ambulance did not come for 53 minutes. I have been informed that two rapid response vehicles were on duty at the time but neither attended. I do not know where they were.