Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a final question. I thank the Cathaoirleach for his discretion. What the witnesses said is really useful. Every time we say the word "sepsis" in here it is a few hundred more times than it was said before. It is great to just be having the conversation and to hear the witnesses' insights. It is interesting in terms of research. There are communities where sepsis has become more high-profile, like Finglas where I am from, because of this tragic circumstances that happened with Seán and the campaign that came out of that. Lots of people are really aware of that word, and of the signs and so on. It would be interesting to see if that kind of short and ad hoccampaign, which it was, has had an impact on the awareness of sepsis in a community. I imagine there are places other than Finglas where those types of tragedies or local campaigns have happened. Could we examine how we can be informed by those experiences? Even with that experience in my local area of Finglas, and people being acutely aware of the signs of sepsis and all the rest, a member of my family passed away from sepsis a year or so after Seán. The signs and symptoms are just so tricky and difficult. We accept that even with all the awareness in the world it can still be difficult to identify and is a very tricky area of infection control. I ask the witnesses to keep pressing as much as they can to try to secure funding. However, I accept that it is not necessarily only about funding; it is about those other issues too. I thank the witnesses. I particularly the witnesses for indicating that they are going to continuously include families like the Hughes family. It is not just them. There are many others. One of the other members of the committee said to me the last time he was here that he had met four or five people since the previous meeting who raised the issue of sepsis with him and he had not heard about it before. It is all part of that bigger picture.