Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is a lovely way to end this part of the meeting. Let us not curse the darkness. I thank the witnesses for coming before the committee and sharing their stories. As I said at the beginning of the meeting, I have a personal involvement and I have been on the journey. I had a near-death experience and people are never the same afterwards. I did not realise that for every hour of having sepsis, there is an 8% chance of dying. I was in the hospital for days. I went home after an operation and my body had started to close down. My face was roasting. My feet, hands and everything were going cold. I went to the emergency department and I was told I looked very healthy and there did not appear to be anything wrong with me. Then there were bells and whistles and I woke up on the ward. People asked me different questions such as whether I had been abroad. I had recently been in Tanzania with an Oireachtas committee. I was told that perhaps it was malaria. They did tests for that and all sorts of other tests. All the time, I was dying. I remember being awake one night and I knew I was dying. You just have to dig deep. As Mr. Callaghan said, you are never the same. I hope, as people are expressing their views here today, that we can move this on. Collectively, we all feel that we could do more on it. This will put big pressure on the next group coming before the committee, and rightly so. Perhaps we can attach a bit more urgency to the issue.

We are talking about a campaign in the second quarter of 2024. If we can bring that back a bit, we can possibly save some of the lives we are talking about here today. I thank the witnesses for their involvement this morning. It was really powerful. I appreciate they had to come in and relive the difficulties they have been through as families and individuals. There are probably many more people out there listening today. Today is not only about getting action. It is also about giving information to people out there. That is useful as well. I thank everyone very much. I will suspend the meeting until the next group comes in.