Ms Ava Battles:

I will address two of Senator Dolan's points, the first of which was about the lack of progress in the past eight years and the fact that we had the reports but were only just coming up with an implementation plan. From my perspective, the loss has been the increase in the level of disability because people have not had access to services. It has meant a decrease in their quality of life and resulted in young people living in nursing homes. My colleague referred to silos in the HSE not having conversations with each other. One budget will not result in a person being given a home care package, but we will put a 42 year old man with three children into a nursing home to provide him with care for the rest of his life. It is about having seamless services that put the person at the centre of service delivery and developing services around the person to meet his or her needs to stay well and in the community. That brings us back to Sláintecare's ethos. The lack of progress has been huge for us and everybody involved.

The Senator asked about the impact of medicines. When medicines are being discussed, one often finds that the only ones that will be mentioned on radio are the ones that will give a person another few days or weeks of life. There are very few discussions about how medicines improve a person's quality of life. If one asks people with MS - I can only speak about this specifically - they say the fact that there are new medicines brings huge hope. That is what people need; they need access to medicines that will keep them well. If I was to say to all of the committee members present that they would not make it to the bathroom, we would all be very embarrassed. It is something we take for granted because we can just get up and walk out to go to the bathroom. For some people, however, a new medication can make all the difference and enable them to make it to the bathroom. It means that they are no longer afraid to leave the house. They can socialise and work. It goes back to the points made about people making a contribution to society and having a better quality of life. I would broaden it from access to medicines to access to all treatments across the board as being vitally important. Sláintecare looks at it from the point of view of keeping people well and the self-management piece in the community, but we need to put resources behind it. There is no point in producing a lovely report and then leaving it on the shelf because it will not benefit anybody.