Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 November 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Proposed Closure of Cuisle Accessible Holiday and Respite Care Resort: Discussion

Photo of John DolanJohn Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for having this meeting focused on this issue. I have a special grá for Cuisle. I was involved when it was a musty old seminary that had not been used for two decades. It brought back other memories for me but those are not the business of this meeting. I will tell Mr. Cunningham that the building has mass concrete walls internally, for the en suites, which was a surprising find at the time. I first heard about this when people with disabilities on social media engaged with me. They were very sad, upset and worried about it. Added to that were people from a number of organisations for Huntington's disease, spina bifida, ataxia and such like. The Chairman is a medical doctor and has particular understanding of the complexities of some of those issues and the stigma related to them for people as they advance, and all of the different elements of some of those and other conditions.

While I knew this already, it has been said to me again over the past couple of weeks that Cuisle was a home from home. It was a safe place where the staff were people's family. As somebody with polio, it is important for me to have time out with others with polio, to give out about doctors, medics and consultants and who is the best one to go to, save in the Chairman's presence. People can exchange how they work things out and what works for them. It is more than gossip. There could be many more places using the hotel model, but something would be missing if there was no Cuisle. The association said that if it had the money to keep Cuisle going and this issue had not arisen, its intention was to keep the show on the road. We need to come back to that, whether today or after today.

There is much local, community and political interest in what Cuisle is and the value that it has had. I regularly travel to various countries in Europe. Not only is there no Cuisle anywhere else in Ireland but I have not heard of one anywhere else in Europe. It is a gem. Following up on what Deputy Kenny has said, people are raw, sour and hurting about what has happened over the past month or so. From an employer's point of view, nobody likes making people redundant. I made five people redundant in my own organisation in the past five or six months. Deputy Kenny talked about the level of crisis. It is not just that Cuisle is an issue. The Irish Wheelchair Association runs personal assistance services that it cannot keep up with. There is a crisis across the whole platform of funding for people with disabilities. Everyone in the Oireachtas knows that from the representations they get, and we try to plug holes in places.

A number of statements have been made by our witnesses. Can we find a way to have them signed off? They referred to what they have received from the LEADER programme and such. Can we find a way to agree what playing pitch we are on and to confirm what the IWA said about the sums of money, such as the €400,000? There is great interest in solving this issue here and people with disabilities keenly want it to be solved. Any chief executive such as myself cannot speak for an organisation's board when the board has not yet made a decision but has to play the ball he or she is given. The reason for the decision related to funding. If the issue of funding can be decommissioned, there is a possibility that we could get back in action. I do not want to overplay that but this needs other players.

It is clear the people in government and in the HSE have not yet put their hands in their pockets for the money, or even returned to say the figure is inflated and that it will cost only €500,000. Is that fair to say? Has anybody contradicted the figure of €1.15 million?

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