Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to say something on Portlaoise hospital. I listened to media reports this morning on what I understand was a long and emotive meeting last night between the Minister and the families. One comment struck me which was that the Minister heard from families whose cases date back to the 1980s. That is alarming. The Minister stated in his opening remarks that to care costs nothing. I am not trying to pre-empt anything, but it sounds to me that there is an appalling culture in the hospital. It is as we have seen in all of the exposés of recent months, be it child care services or Áras Attracta. A culture emerges and is somehow approved by a failure to speak up. If we do anything as a Government, we must break that kind of culture that starts to embed itself in organisations and places where often vulnerable people - and pregnant women are very vulnerable - go as a place of safety. It is alarming in that regard to think that we are talking about cases dating back over 30 years. I will leave it there as we are to have another meeting on Tuesday to discuss this.

I was interested in Mr. O'Brien's opening remarks on PPCI services. There is an ongoing PPCI national capacity study, which includes Waterford. We are told it is due to be completed shortly. How long more are we going to have to wait on this? If Mr. O'Brien could provide us with a timeline, I would greatly appreciate it. As he understands, the lack of a 24-7 cardiology service at University Hospital Waterford is of huge concern, not just to people in Waterford but throughout the south east due to our geography and issues of proximity to other PPCI centres.

I am very disappointed in the reply to my question on academic appointments for University Hospital Waterford. The response states that the Higgins report does not indicate the introduction of these posts at the hospital. However, I have a press release from the HSE's website dated 16 May 2014 in which the former Minister, Deputy James Reilly, in renaming the hospital in the presence of Ambrose McLoughlin, the then Secretary General, and, I understand, the President of UCC, Dr. Michael Murphy, stated that five academic posts would be provided at University Hospital Waterford. We have heard from other colleagues about the importance of ensuring that our junior hospital doctors and trainee medical students have all they need to ensure they are trained and get the utmost from their placements and internships in our hospitals. Frankly, I am beginning to think University Hospital Waterford was just a name change. It means nothing unless we get our academic posts that were agreed on and promised by Ambrose McLoughlin, Deputy Reilly and the President of UCC.

My last question is on speech and language services. It has come to my attention from encounters with a great many people that when children reach age six, their access to speech and language therapy changes. If the child is lucky enough to be a member of an early years service, he or she has access. Once the child turns six, however, he or she reverts to the community care service. The numbers are alarming given how few speech and language therapists we have in Waterford in comparison to neighbouring areas like Carlow-Kilkenny and Wexford. That is despite the fact that we have the highest number of patients waiting to be seen by therapists. In Carlow-Kilkenny, there are 11.7 therapists who are working with 907 people. In Waterford, we have 9.8 whole-time equivalents but 2,361 people, often young people, who are waiting to be seen. In Wexford, there are 18 posts with only 2,246 people. It is a huge disparity. What is happening in that regard? Children are coming through the early intervention teams and by the time they get to school, they regress because the services are no longer there. It is not something we can stand over.