Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach. Not being a member of this committee I am thankful for the opportunity to contribute. Ms Mullins gave a superb opening statement overflowing with common sense. Any reasonable person listening to her would ask how the HSE can defend its action. As Councillor Kieran Bourke reminded me when the meeting was suspended, it was on the last day of the Dáil three years ago that he and I met the Minister, Deputy Donnelly. The Minister gave us a categoric assurance that evening St. Brigid's would be kept open. Unfortunately, that commitment has been reneged on. The councillor and I can only relay what was said to us that evening. We were happy then that once Covid and the problems it was creating had eased, St. Brigid's would again take its pivotal place in the healthcare of the people of Carrick-on-Suir and the surrounding areas, but unfortunately that has not happened.

Listening to Ms Mullins, I was thinking of how yesterday the families of two constituents were in contact with me. Their parent is ready to leave hospital and being discharged but there is no step-down or respite bed to go to. That is two cases in my office and I am sure it is the same in the offices of Deputy McGrath and others. We have a shortage of beds. We get figures every day showing how many people are on trolleys around the country. It baffles me the HSE cannot see places like St. Brigid's have a huge, pivotal role to play in solving that trolley crisis. It does not matter which hospital the people were in. Neither of the people I mentioned were in a Tipperary hospital, but they were Tipperary people. They are going to be in hospital all over the weekend while we try to get a respite bed for them somewhere. We can all argue and give out about the health service being this or that and the problems not easily solved, but as the then Taoiseach said one day, we should pick the low-hanging fruit first and try to make improvements in the health service that way. We would be doing that by keeping places like St. Brigid's open. It was St. Micheal's unit in Tipperary University Hospital, Clonmel he was referring to that day after a visit there. I am thankful the beds in St. Micheal's unit will be open for the forthcoming winter and I hope it will ease the trolley crisis in Tipperary University Hospital. If was a highly-paid executive in the HSE looking at this issue of our having a lot of people on trolleys, which we all want to resolve, I would surely look at the model of the likes of St. Brigid's Hospital to try to ease it. We are in the middle of summer and as I said, there are those two families whose parents have been discharged, but the parents are not well enough to come home. Ms Mullins made points about nursing homes. We have all been lobbied by nursing homes in the last couple of weeks as they are under huge pressure as well.

Such fundraising has been done in Carrick to support St. Brigid's. As the Cathaoirleach said, the community would be entitled to feel they were stakeholders in the building. That is the way they felt about it. People in Carrick are getting tired of this battle now. It has been three years and they are frustrated. They want to get what was rightly theirs, namely, respite and palliative care beds. There is a huge fight on at the moment to get properly-functioning palliative care beds into St. Antony's unit in Clonmel. Families will want to be near a person who is in his or her final days and hours and a proper family room must be attached to that palliative care bed. To put a palliative care bed into a hospital is not enough as proper facilities are needed, which St. Brigid's had in three well-designed rooms that served for generations.

There is the Dean Maxwell unit in the north of the county. There has been a huge fight to get long-stay beds into it and finally the HSE is in the process of doing something to sort that situation after years and years of lobbying and fighting. The HSE was going to leave Roscrea without any long-term beds and we hope that is on the way to being resolved, so I tell the people of Carrick they must keep fighting. It is their right to have respite, step-down and palliative care beds in their locality. To tell a person in Carrick he or she is going to have a palliative care or respite bed in Clogheen is just nonsensical. It is impractical and not on. I am not going into how many people have transport or whatever. If a person is ill you want to be near them as frequently as possible and to be asked to travel those kinds of distances is nonsensical. Councillor Bourke and the other councillors in the area have fought a hard fight. We cannot say there is any progress made. There is no point in fooling ourselves. We have not made progress and we are meeting a stone wall from the HSE.

I will finish by saying the last day we met in January I was asked by people in the gallery to look for the minutes of that meeting. I had not seen them until today. A Chathaoirligh, you cannot let the HSE away with giving that answer to your committee.