Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Since the inception of this State - and this is in all countries - there is the so-called permanent government; the Civil Service is there to provide advice and memos are given to Government. The advice given to this Government is that there should be only three elective hospitals and Limerick is not there. People prepared that advice for better or worse. For all his positives and flaws, the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and whoever becomes the next Minister after him and so on will follow the advice of his or her chief advisers. The Sláintecare all-party advisory group buys into that. It does not recommend an elective hospital in Limerick, Clare or anywhere in the mid-west. There is a flaw here. I say this in support of all the witnesses. They know and live this every day. They know what is required but their senior management do not, and that is not the advice they are giving to Government. Therefore, for this Government and the Government that will come after, this will perpetuate itself because we have somebody there who does not believe in it.

I will move on. I would really like the HSE to do some capacity mapping. This became a buzz word during the Ukrainian war. The Department of Education was able to very quickly capacity map where it had schools, resources and everything. I would love to see the HSE do some capacity mapping in the mid-west in terms of GP and dental care. Just yesterday, a report was launched across the street in Buswell's Hotel on poverty in County Clare. It identified that comparative to the Irish average, County Clare is 33% behind in terms of GP care. We are 50% behind in terms of dental care, something to which I can attest. I have had a broken tooth for five weeks. This is something each member here can tell the witnesses anecdotally. We know it on the ground. We would love the HSE to capacity map to identify where those grey areas are in west Clare and north Clare. Can the HSE please map it out for us at some point and tell us where the deficiencies are? We cannot get personnel back there to provide community-level healthcare. Maybe that is the reason they are going into accident and emergency medicine.