Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We need to acknowledge the importance of the witnesses' words to the committee in highlighting these issues, which, to passers-by and those not directly affected, are not issues at all but which have an impact on those who are directly affected in a way the witnesses have described very adequately. We have all in our various lifetimes had similar brushes with the same experiences. It serves to remind us these things do not go away and there is a need for the kind of things the witnesses have spoken about. There is a need for concern, compassion, caring, recognition of the situation in which a parent or parents may find themselves and recognition of the extent to which isolation can affect people being left alone to fend for themselves. We have dealt with it before and it has not diminished with the passage of time. We thank the witnesses for being here.