Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach for allowing me to speak. I am not a member of this committee. I welcome Mattie Quinn and Pat O'Looney, who are here. Anna Cronin, the other soldier among them, is at a wedding today in County Kerry and cannot be here. I also welcome the witnesses, especially Mr. Fitzmaurice, who is new to the role of the chief officer of CHO 2.

Mr. Ryan's opening remarks concerning the Seven Springs day centre offer hope to the Loughrea concerned citizens group. Its members acknowledge that since Mr. Fitzmaurice's elevation to the chief officer position, he has taken this problem with the closure of the Seven Springs day centre and is trying to resolve it in a way that will ensure it will reopen. For me, all the members of the group and all the people who protested and met so many times, this is a ray of hope that we are at least being listened to at this stage.

I listened to the Cathaoirleach and Deputy Mattie McGrath discuss St. Brigid's hospital. In the past, things were happening in Loughrea about which questions were not being answered. We were able to find information under the freedom of information legislation which led us to say, undoubtedly, that those decisions made back then were wrong and were made by people looking for a way, a bit like Putin did with Ukraine, to try to take over territory they did not own. The sad thing about the Seven Springs day centre in Loughrea is that it was built with money from a trust and not by the HSE. The HSE then came along and said it was taking that money to put it into a community nursing unit. As advised to me by the Minister of State with special responsibility for older people, the HSE also said it was going to refurbish another facility, at a cost of €1 million, and again this money was going to come from the trust. It was like the money did not matter because it was not the HSE's. In fact, some fundraising was done locally for the Seven Springs day centre. We know people involved in the senior citizens committee who gave money towards it.

An agreement was made to run a day service in the hotel, as Mr. Fitzmaurice will know. I do not know what the cost is but it was initially only supposed to run from September to December 2022. It has now been extended to 26 October 2023. I hope that by that date HIQA will have come around to agreeing to the sensible proposal being made by Mr. Fitzmaurice and his team.

The concerned citizens group in Loughrea will work tirelessly to ensure we get the right thing done in Loughrea, for the older people in Loughrea and the entire catchment area. We are offering that support. I am also offering support as a public representative. I mention as well Councillor Geraldine Donohue, who took on this campaign when she was first alerted to it, and is still so much involved in it, as well as Councillor Shane Curley. We have now got the support of the members of the health forum, including Dr. Evelyn Parsons and the cathaoirleach of the county council, Councillor Liam Carroll, who came out to Loughrea. He considered this issue so serious that it was the first engagement he had on becoming cathaoirleach. We also have Councillor Donagh Killilea on that committee.

We are here to support him Mr. Fitzmaurice. We want to ensure we get the right conclusion to this problem as quickly as possible. We will work with him and support him to get that done. We know that he reports back, as he committed, to the concerned citizens group. It is commendable that he has done what he said he would. That is important. When we have this sorted out, the bigger issue for the HSE will be to determine how this came about, how much it has cost and how it got out of hand to such an extent that decisions were being made that were not right at all. The best thing to say now is that we will let that rest for the moment. When we hear Senator Craughwell talking about €25 billion going into the health service annually, we have a huge job on our hands to try to find out exactly how, in the name of God, we are spending this money, if we are getting value for money and to get accountability.

We had a major furore over RTÉ. The money involved there is only a pittance compared to what is going on in the HSE, if what we are hearing today is the mantra being used. In my town of Tuam, more than €30 million has been spent in recent years providing top-class accommodation. We are reopening the Grove site. The Tánaiste is coming down on Monday to reopen it. We have a brand-new community nursing unit. This again happened with the help of the Joe and Helen O'Toole charitable trust providing €7 million. There are, therefore, people in communities who wish to ensure we have the best health service and who are contributing to it. The last thing that I, as an elected politician, would like to see, however, is individuals like that being given the two fingers later and people going off and doing whatever they like. The campus at St. Brendan's is a model of how services can be run. The staff are brilliant. Everybody loves the place. Then somebody comes along and decides to destroy it. I just cannot understand how we could do this. We do not know who made the decision. The problem is that we do not have accountability.

We will work with Mr. Fitzmaurice and his team. We know the objective of the work from here on, and what he has been doing all summer, is to find a solution that everybody will be proud of and that we will all be very happy will be the right one we will do in the end.