Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 January 2023

Committee on Public Petitions

Public Petition on St. Brigid’s Hospital, Carrick-on-Suir: Save St. Brigid’s Action Group

Photo of Richard O'DonoghueRichard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Mullins and Mr. Torpey for attending. Barringtons Hospital in Limerick was just mentioned. One thing that we all have in common here, no matter what county we are from – I am from County Limerick and the others represent the other three counties – is the HSE and HIQA and the ludicrous reports they come out with that make such a difference to us when we are trying to keep hospitals open. They come out with a report that says something is not fit for purpose. Here they talked about narrow hallways. I am delighted we have a legal opinion and a common-sense opinion, which is not that common, and we have building experience, again with common sense which is not that common. I am from a building background myself. I am a building contractor. The report says that the building is not fit for purpose; narrow hallways, yet University Hospital Limerick, UHL, has trolleys on both sides and you cannot get in sideways, which is not fit for purpose. Should we close down UHL in that case? This is what we are coming up against. Some of the statements they come out with are absolutely ludicrous.

When we talk about Barringtons, it has been decommissioned as a private hospital because a new hospital is being put up. I was at a meeting with the Minister of Health last week. The Taoiseach was there and the CEO of UHL. Now they are considering the option of Barringtons going back to being a public hospital. Imagine that. After it going from public to private, now they are looking at it to go back into public ownership for more bed care for a public hospital. Then they come up with a report to say that they want to close St. Brigid’s in Carrick-on-Suir. Yet they wanted to use it for Covid even though they said the hallways are too narrow and there is no space for whatever bits and pieces like lockers. That is off the wall to me.

I am sorry that I was not here for the opening statements but I was listening on the monitor because I could not get down to the meeting. From what I heard in the introduction, this is more than a hospital. This is personal; it is family, it is local, it offered support and it worked. We have reports showing that the care you got in St. Brigid’s was at the highest standards yet there were narrow corridors and smaller rooms. There are 11,000 signatures collected. People went in there for end of life and the people who visited them there have no complaints but we closed it. We have hospitals open now and there are nothing but complaints yet we are keeping them open and keeping management in place.

The HIQA report and the HSE’s position do not add up to me. If you have a nursing home, there is no notice of a HIQA inspection, they just come in and inspect but if you are a public hospital, they give you two days' notice. It is amazing that when we have a trolley crisis and when HIQA says there will be a report, there is no trolley crisis. It disappears. Just like that, like Paul Daniels. It is magic; they just disappear. I am a member of this committee, which is why I came down to the meeting. I am not from the county but we all have the same problems here.

I am thinking about when we come to end of life. Both of my parents, God rest them, have passed away. We were lucky that we were able to give them palliative care at home. I am from a large family of 11 and we were very lucky that we could do that. To talk about it in political terms, I went into see the former Minister, Michael J. Noonan of Fianna Fáil, when he was in Milford hospice. I remember the dignity he had in Milford hospice. It rings in my head. He had his phone up in front of him along with his notepad and he was happy in the environment he was in and politically, he was still doing his job. Two weeks later, that man passed away, surrounded by his family and friends.

He was still doing the job that he said he was elected to do in a care facility that looked after him completely, as well as his family, friends and anyone who wanted to visit. I cannot understand why the HSE and HIQA were trying to fix something that was not broken because they cannot fix the stuff that is broken. If the media, the Government and all the people who are listening today take anything from this, it should be that the local community and the people and staff in Carrick-on-Suir had no complaints. The facility was doing what it did at 100%. If there were to be minor alterations, being from a construction background myself, they were only minor alterations. If it came to it, I bet the community would have done it. It fundraised for doors and other things in the hospital but it was not given an opportunity to do it this time.

People who would have be in this care facility are now being sent to other places where there is not even transport on the bus network because of where they are situated. St. Brigid's Hospital was doing a significant job. It helped the environment because people were able to walk there or to travel there. It was important in the local community and it has now been stopped.

The HSE and HIQA should retract this and say that they have got this wrong. It seems that when they do something, they take a stance where they cannot say they are wrong because they are liable. If one looks at the number of cases that the HSE and HIQA are fighting and the legal expenses of those, they could open three or four more hospitals instead. They deal with legal cases every day. They should say sorry, that they got it wrong, put their hands up, say they will fix it instead of looking at liability, and that they will put back something that was not broken but that needed small changes. Billions have been spent on the national children's hospital and it is still not finished but we are talking about minor things to be done to keep this unit open at a minimum expense for a community of people who, at the time of the end of their lives, want to be around their families. That facility has been closed down and taken away. I cannot believe it and I have been elected for almost three years now.

I did not realise I could speak on the first day in the Dáil because I was new to it. I had a small piece of paper with me. I looked around and wondered if I could speak because I was new to it. I was a councillor for six years beforehand. I put up my hand. The Ceann Comhairle, Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl, was there. He wrote down my name. I had to write down a few notes on what I wanted to talk about in case I got a brain-freeze. The first thing that came out of my mouth was about the structure of University Hospital Limerick. Two and a half years later, it has got worse. The HSE has not fixed it. The management has been in place for ten years or more and it has got worse. The legal bill for the hospital has gone through the roof from fighting cases rather than fixing and putting supports in place for nursing staff, the doctors and the structure. St. Brigid's Hospital had structure, community, spirit and everything, but the HSE and HIQA closed it.

The HSE, HIQA and the Minister should look at the reports of what was there before this which show the care that was given there. They should man up, say that they got it wrong and they should not have listened to the report. Deputy Jackie Cahill was here and said he got a commitment from the Minister of Health at the time but that he did not follow through. It has to be hard for Deputies to get a commitment from someone in their own party who then does not follow through. That is no reflection on Deputy Jackie Cahill but it is a reflection on the Minister, who got something wrong, as did the HSE and HIQA.

Let us do something right today. We can see the support from everyone around the room here, even people from different counties. We want the facility in Carrick-on-Suir open. I want it open. I want the same things for Limerick as I do for Carrick-on-Suir, Kilkenny, Waterford and Tipperary. They had it and it was taken away by the HSE and HIQA. It is time for them to reverse the decision and do what is right. Common sense is not that common when it comes to politics but it needs to change. I thank the Chair for this meeting and for the opportunity to speak.

I say to everyone who has come here that this is about people power. The HSE and HIQA will look at it and try to stop what we are trying to get to the communities. We can probably be more open when we are not in a party. People in a party often cannot say what they want to say, whereas people can say it when they are outside a party. It is not that they are trying to take down the party but that we are trying to help the parties to do the right thing. Today, I want the parties to do the right thing and to reverse the decision about Carrick-on-Suir. Put the facility back in place. This was not broken and they took it away. It could have done with investment. I ask everyone to go back to their Cabinet Ministers and their parties to tell them we should do the right thing for places like Carrick-on-Suir. In future, let us investigate all the reports to see if they are correct and proper, what will happen, what supports are in place and what extra pressure we are putting on other sectors within the HSE by closing such facilities, as it has just done.

As I said, Barringtons hospital has gone from being a public hospital, which I was in when I was 13, to being a private hospital, which I was also in, and now it is turning public again because a new private hospital is being built in Limerick. The Minister has said he wants it to go back to being a public hospital again.

A mistake was made and should be rectified.

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