Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to get this opportunity to ask a few questions and to put my point of view across. I welcome the witnesses. I am pleased they are present. I do not know any of the witnesses and I have nothing personal against any of them. I have not said it before now but I think our health service is a shambles. We are going backwards not forwards with every aspect of it that I deal with every day. I do not know who is the cause of it but massive sums of money are going into the health department. A total of €500 million more was announced in this year’s budget. I said specifically in the Chamber that I want to see improvements to the health service, especially in Kerry. Every Member will talk about his or her own patch. I want to see some return for the €500 million in this coming year, 2017. I do not want to see the money just consumed by the health service or the HSE. We need to see a return for the money.

I will start with the most vulnerable sections of the community in Kerry. The St. Mary of the Angels centre deals with mentally and physically impaired people, including children. The facility was provided free by the people, first by the farmer and his daughter who was a nun, and it was raised out of the ground by voluntary fund-raising from all parts of Kerry. We are now told that it is to be closed down and that they have not taken in any people for the past four years. We have been told different stories. I am not saying that we have been told lies but we have not been told the truth either. When the Minister was asked about it in the Dáil Chamber, Members were told that no change will be made to where the service users of St. Mary of the Angels will go, or if they are to leave the centre, until full consultation takes place with the families, the service users themselves and the staff. A few days later, we heard that in 2014 most of the people in that wonderful facility were put on the local authority housing list without consultation with any family member. Some people called the centre an institution but it is not that; the gates are wide open and the families go in and out to visit their relations and they are free to do so at all hours of the day and night. Those families had to come in and sign documentation when the residents needed to get the flu jab, yet they were not consulted when they were put on the housing list. That was wrong.

In Killarney, 27 long-enduring patients were attending Lantern Lodge. They had mild depression and they went to the centre religiously. They had access to shower facilities and got their dinner there in the middle of the day. Now they are being transferred to another facility, Leawood House, and come hell or high water, the HSE will not give them any dinner. All it needs to do is to order it and it will be brought down from the St. Columbanus home, which has a wonderful kitchen and staff working there. We are being told the problem is a local HSE one and that those people will not get dinner anymore and that shower facilities will not be provided. It is said that the facilities will be better for those people. If I was hungry or not washed, I would not be in a good state of mind either. I will not rest until whoever is making that decision reverses it because it is wrong.

We have several problems. Dr. Daly has outlined what has happened to the GP service. It is bordering on criminal to think that many rural areas will not have a GP in the future. I do not know whether it was in 2013 or 2014 when 89 out of a total of 91 medical graduates went abroad and only two stayed in this country.

They would have stayed here if the outlook was good for them in terms of getting work for which they would be properly remunerated, but that was not an option because of insurance issues, the effects of the financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation, the allowances that have been taken from general practitioners, GPs, and so on. With the exception of three or four towns, we will end up without any doctors in Kerry if that trend is allowed to continue. The question that arises is whether students in college today who wish to become general practitioners should be told that they can do so but that they will have to go abroad to find work. That is how the position looks to me.

With regard to hospitals, we have a number of hospitals in Kerry. Several wards have been closed in University Hospital Kerry since 2008 and no attempt has been made to reopen them. Over a period of five or six months, my late father was a patient in both Kerry General Hospital and the district hospital in Killarney where he got the most wonderful service, as did all the patients in the ward with him, from the very hard-working staff. We need more capacity in Kerry. Only half of the new district hospital in Kenmare is open. Only half of the new hospital in Dingle is open, with some of the accommodation being used as office space. Where is our health system going?

With regard to the home help service, every day I am inundated with calls from people looking for an extra half hour or more of home help. More than half of one of the pensions of an elderly couple I know goes towards paying for private home help because the Health Service Executive, HSE, does not have the wherewithal to provide home help for that couple. The nephew of a 95 year old man is paying the cost of most of his uncle's home help. The nephew is looking for home help for a quarter of an hour in the evening to put the man to bed but he was told the man would be better off going into a nursing home where he could stay in bed. Issues like that are driving me mad. As I have said, I have no personal gripe with anybody but these issues are affecting the most vulnerable people. That 95 year old man was born in 1921. Is the answer to his problem to put him into a nursing home where he can lie in bed and die slowly because he has no incentive to get out of bed? God Almighty, we must address these issues because the stories I have told the witnesses are true. I did not make them up.

We have a mental health facility in Killarney, which was built within a year and a half and which can cater for 40 people. Suicides are happening all around us yet that new building is closed. Will some of that €500 million funding be allocated to Kerry to allow that facility be reopened?

With regard to the ambulance service, the HSE said there would be a reconfiguration of the service in Kerry but we have had a reduction in the service. I never want to hear the word "reconfiguration" again because in Kerry it meant a reduction of the service. For example, when an ambulance is leaving Cork University Hospital the driver must press a red button to indicate that he is free for work. He could be sent on a call to Kinsale but if someone presents looking for an ambulance in Sneem or Caherdaniel, another ambulance will have to be brought from Tralee to attend that person. Ambulances are travelling over and back trying to make up the deficit but they are in danger of crashing into each other because there is no control over what is happening in the system.

We have intermediate care vehicles but we do not have drivers to drive them. We are told it will take three years to teach the staff how to care for people and use the vehicle.

The final journey of a constituent of mine, who was a very good friend of all our family, was to the district hospital in the back of a builder's Transit van because the emergency ambulance was not allowed bring him from his home to the hospital because it is not an accident-and-emergency facility. Common sense must prevail and these matters must be addressed.