Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their engagement. I thank Ms Anne Walsh especially for her work on the services in Clogheen. We have been through all this with Clogheen hospital. It is a fabulous institution with significant local involvement. It is the sister hospital to Carrick-on-Suir. We saw what transpired there. Great people before me and political people insisted that it stayed there. It is a tremendous place. It got the work done and was made HIQA-compliant. We had the same situation with the bed numbers and wards not being HIQA-compliant but we worked through them. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark with regard to what happened in Carrick-on-Suir. It is rotten to the core. The questions have been asked so I will not repeat them. It was deemed fit to be used as a step-down facility for Covid and the witnesses are telling us it was not fit for anything else. Why did they not raise alarm bells then and say that it could not be used as a step-down facility and was not suitable for various things? They are pulling the wool over people's eyes.

I raised it again in the Chamber today at the request of some people from the committee and asked the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, to correct the record, because she misled the Dáil when I asked a question on 18 January. She stated that the hospital was more than 200 years old. My information is that it is 180 years old. That is just a fact and a difference of 20 years. Either there are facts, not opinions, which someone can stand over or there are not. Therefore, I ask the Minister of State to correct the information and the record of the Dáil. She also stated that the hospital was deemed to be no longer fit for purpose by HIQA. Can the witnesses or anyone provide a specific report that states that HIQA said it is not fit for purpose? HIQA has never stated that in any of its reports and I asked the Minister of State to correct the record on that but she refused. People are telling us it is on the website. I want specific chapter and verse of where HIQA said the hospital was no longer fit for purpose.

Additionally, the Minister of State stated on 18 January that there were health and safety issues, especially relating to fire. I asked her again today to correct that because the action group, which I compliment on this, has had a fire and evacuation report, while another report from the HSE, dated 2019, raised no such issue. We are being told porkies and there are shifting sands. One might be told the truth once but to find out other things, one has to dig, scrounge, scrape, mix and burrow.

Mr. Ruane mentioned the white elephant. That building will be long gone before St. Brigid's will fall into disrepair. It is a noble building with noble staff and a noble community that raised so much money for those hospice homes. There is €70,000 or €80,000, I am told, in an account belonging to that community. When will that be returned to the community? It is not the HSE's. It is for the hospital. I do not know where it has gone. I am told it is in an account. Is it going back to the community? It is there for refurbishment. Did the HSE not do any costing because it thought the locals were going to do all the fundraising for it? I am appalled at the witnesses. I had a meeting before Christmas, when the HSE did not have figures. The HSE built that on the floodplain. It built a modern building. Will the HSE clarify if it was a public-private partnership, which I think it was? It was built with no wheelchair access. If I was building any kind of house, it would have to have wheelchair access or planning. What planning happened? Has the HSE any qualifications or engineer's report? How did that happen? That has to be added at a huge cost. What are the numbers working in the building? I would like a tour of that building if I could get one someday, to see it myself. Anytime I pass it, it looks more like a morgue to me than anything else because it is darkness and nothing seems to be happening there, but I do not know until I go in and see.

The witnesses mentioned the staff and that they have rededicated the hospital. There is no word of patients. Are any patients going in? There are wonderful staff. Some are definitely good in their own right. Do people know about it? Are they going in and using it? Is it like St. Luke's hospital in Clonmel? When my wife worked there in the 1980s, it had 800 patients. Now it has offices and more offices. Many are in better condition than this building. Why does the HSE need all the offices when mental health services patients are left at the wayside? We saw what happened with mental health services and have reports on it. I cannot remember the lovely acronym that was used for it. There were going to be community services but they have not been delivered. I have people ringing me about crises because they are not covered in Clonmel. People have been waiting for four days in the hospital in Clonmel to see a consultant for child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. They are in a state of trauma, as are their parents. The roll-out of mental health care has failed communities in many areas and it will not work here either. I am not taking it out on the witnesses but we need action and honesty, which we are not getting and have not got. Was Mr. Ruane in the HSE when it built this white elephant? He knows what I am talking about. It is the primary care centre.