Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Estates management is a key. The Minister has just spoken about building new 96-bed blocks. In the mid-west region, and this is probably replicated nationwide, there are a lot of public healthcare facilities lying idle. Inisgile is a 16-bed mental health facility located in my home parish of Parteen that briefly opened as a vaccination centre for Covid. In 2019, it was fully refitted and retrofitted but that fabulous facility is lying idle. The facility could be used as accommodation for nurses, a mental health facility, refugee accommodation or cater for our homeless population. I have repeatedly asked what is happening with the facility but we have not got a sufficient answer. There is a long-term plan for the facility and to have it sat idle in this day and age is quite unforgivable.

Also, from the State's point of view, it is wrong, which I have often said to the Minister, that the management of UHL and the hospital group are not based in the UHL campus. Instead, they are based in a beautiful office block in an industrial estate that is far removed from UHL. I firmly believe that you cannot manage a ship, hospital or school if you are not located on the premises. We have been given every reason why these staff cannot be located at the hospital. I ask the Minister to intervene and crack a whip and say to get back to the hospital environment because you cannot run a hospital from an office suite located at a distance of 2 km. Repeatedly front-line staff tell us that management are not based in the hospital and that is failure No. 1.

Finally, there is a plan to co-locate Limerick Maternity Hospital with the acute hospital in Dooradoyle. I would love to know how that stands. Last night, I had a heart-wrenching phone call with a woman from my constituency who, following the birth of her beautiful baby, struggled with postnatal depression and postpartum psychosis during Covid, itself a difficult time. It took her a while to get her head around what she was dealing with and to get professional and clinical help. She told me that she knew of no facility in the country for the treatment of postnatal and postpartum depression. She was sent to a mental health facility with padded walls beside people with addiction problems and a range of other mental health issues. Her point, which I accept and for which I am advocating today, is that there should be a facility somewhere regionally or nationally. This would allow the father or other family member to come in with the child, integrate the child back with the mother and support her more sensitively than putting her in a padded cell.

She mentioned another point, one that I experienced when our last child was born. When women check into the delivery ward of the maternity hospital, one of the first things that happens is their bloods are taken. However, there is no blood testing lab in the maternity hospital in Limerick. Blood has to be brought by motorcycle or taxi across the city. This seems illogical. If you have the good luck or bad luck – I do not know which to describe it as – to go into labour in the early hours of the morning, one is vying for taxi drivers who are bringing people to and from nightclubs versus taking a fare from the hospital to bring a blood sample. It is daft.

Will the Minister comment on estates management, maternity facilities, postpartum depression and psychosis and how we can more sensitively cater for people’s needs?