Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully appreciate that during Covid, the HSE did a powerful job. It did a tremendous job and I could not give the agency enough credit. I fully appreciate also that it had to divert and relocate staff into functions such as vaccination and community work, but Covid is over and those staff should have been returned to that hospital, St. Brigid's. Mr. Ryan is taking the flak here today but, as the Chairman has pointed out, this must be our third or fourth meeting here. One of the redacted pages, as I recall, had one word at the top of the page that could be read and the rest had been cut out. What sort of respect is that for the last port of call members of the public have when they are in conflict with a State organisation? We are the elected representatives of the public. We are the public voice. These people cannot hold the HSE to account.

Maybe it is unfair that Mr. Ryan is in here, given he is not familiar with the site. He cannot be familiar with every site - I accept that - but at the end of the day, somebody reports to him and he reports to somebody else. Somebody took a decision to redact that document. Somebody took the convenient decision to close St. Brigid's and said that, now the staff had been taken out of it, we should not put them back in.

I may be wrong about this, and Deputy Mattie McGrath or Deputy Canney will tell me if I am, but I recall asking the director of nursing from Tipperary, at a previous meeting, I think it was, whether there was a problem with infection control. The Cathaoirleach asked if there had been any recorded case of cross-infection. The answers were that there definitely were not. Saying, therefore, that it was necessary to close the place because of infection control just does not wash in any way.

The bottom line is that there is a community here that is 100% behind its little hospital where people are allowed to go and spend the last few days of their lives with their families around them. It is a community that cares, one willing to fundraise and that is behind the system. Somebody, somewhere, not Mr. Ryan, took a decision to close it, and that is just wrong, in every sense of the word. We must put humanity back into healthcare. It is not all about the bottom line. For God's sake, we are spending €25 billion on healthcare in this country. Surely to God, we do not have to close places down. The plan should always be to keep the community involved.