Ms Susan Mullins:

Never, and the primary care centre was built 2 m up because the HSE brought in engineers who saw that there was a river nearby and, to their minds, there must have been a flood plain there. It was never flooded, though, and the 2 m was the issue then, with the lift and the new thing that does not work.

Another huge issue is that no alternative was put in place. It is like the stories of the other two witnesses from Loughrea and Midleton. Nothing else was put in place before the HSE shut the centre down, and it was working. Fair enough, the HSE was saying there was bigger capacity for costs and so on. Could it not build something else? The HSE never looked at this properly. There were no costings. That was very apparent. It was just a case of get ridding of it because it costs us too much.

I heard Deputy Mattie McGrath speak of the palliative rooms. Those three palliative rooms were just magic. There is no other word for them. I cannot articulate the peace and solace those three rooms brought to people. It was amazing. All my neighbours have been in that hospital. It touched every family. It worked really well, the staff were amazing and the HSE shut it down. To listen to other people here today, it seems to be a policy of the HSE to shut down all this old stuff. Then I listen to Ms Curtis speak about mental health and going back to the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere, and it is like the HSE is going back to the 19th century, whereas 180 years ago we had a hospital that was working. It is like the HSE is trying to shut all this down and there is some policy at the top layer Deputy Buckley talked about. The top layer made this decision and is shutting down all these facilities but putting nothing in place beforehand, and we are having a massive crisis with our population getting older. It is going to implode.

The HSE is a cannibal of itself, with a budget of €25 billion and the amount it spends on agency work. It is like it is not the HSE's money so there is no managing of the money. Then it shuts down something that works perfectly. What I think hurt the people of Carrick-on-Suir and the 11,000 signatories the most was that nearly everybody has contributed to that hospital in some way. Everybody had a loved one in there for some reason, including my neighbours and my family. It is shocking because the hospital worked and the HSE shut it without providing an alternative. That is the issue and it is what the HSE is doing everywhere - shutting what works and coming up with these mad ideas. I have listened to the story of Loughrea, where the HSE wanted to put the people for day care, which is so important. There is ageist discrimination. For carers, too, there is discrimination in Carrick-on-Suir.

I could keep going on about this. I see now that there are offices in St. Brigid's Hospital while we have this massive new state-of-the-art building that is not doing what it should. We have St. Brigid's with those three palliative rooms and we have offices in there.