Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for allowing me in. I am not a member of this committee but I have a personal interest in the topic we are talking about and I have spoken about it a couple of times, including every time the NAI has been in. It is good to see Ms Rogers and the rest of the witnesses.

As the witnesses know, 16 years ago I was diagnosed with MS as a 19-year-old and I am one of 10,000 people who have this condition in Ireland. I get my treatment through the public health system and the treatment I got at the start was difficult to navigate for me as a young man. I have seen vast improvements in the public health system recently and I have to put that on the record. I had a relapse last year and I was put on a new treatment, which was quite intense, for a short period of time, and I have to do another round of it again this year. The support and help I got from the MS nurses and neurologists in Tallaght University Hospital was second to none. I have to put that on the record as well because I am often quite critical when there are not good services, and rightly so, but in my lived experience I have seen improvements in the service.

We are talking about neurorehabilitation but as the witnesses know, MS is different for everybody. The best intervention I got at the early stage was access to psychology because that allowed me to accept that I had the condition. As a young man of 32, I could not accept that I had this lifelong condition and all I could see at the time was a dark future. That access I got - and I see Alison here from MS Ireland - was from MS Ireland. The access I got to psychology and counselling at that stage enabled me to start making changes, to accept the condition I had and to see things in a brighter way because at the time I was in a really dark space.

When other people were talking I was thinking how with MS and other neurological conditions, you do not always see them. You have this condition but people do not generally see it. If I had €1 for every time someone said to me you do not look like you have MS I would be rich. I do not know what someone should look like when they have MS but if I had €1 for every time someone said that to me I would be worth a fortune. People do not see, for example, what I had to do this morning just to get into work and what I have to do during the day to maintain the quality of life I have. I have a really good quality of life and I always mention that because you have to give some hope to people who are newly diagnosed. There is an awful lot of hope out there. Just because you cannot see it does not mean you do not have it and I have heard that loads of times.

I apologise that I missed the start of the meeting because I was with someone else so if I ask the same questions again please feel free to elaborate on them or answer them in a different way if needs be. I will start off with a parochial question. I put in a lot of parliamentary questions in the last while to the HSE. I got a reply saying that a location has been agreed for a community neurorehabilitation team within community healthcare organisation, CHO 6 and CHO 7. CHO 7 is the area I represent. The reply also stated that negotiations are ongoing to agree a governance model in order to be able to proceed with this recruitment. I want to ask a few questions on that. Has the NAI had any reassurances that these deadlines will be adhered to and that a decision on the governance models for the community neurorehabilitation teams will be adopted as soon as possible? Does the NAI know the reasons the governance models for teams that are successfully up and running in CHOs 1 and 3 cannot be rolled out in the other CHOs, including in CHOs 6 and 7?