Ms Mary Farrell:

No, it is not. I was recently going through files looking for something and I found a letter I wrote back when I started out, almost 30 years ago. It is as relevant now as it was then. There are bits and pieces, pockets of services, that were not there previously. Headway, for example, which is based in Dublin, provides just a small number of day services. It is resourced for a certain number of hours per day and for certain categories of people. Not everybody fits in to it. It is about the people fitting in to the programme rather than the programme fitting the people. All this is still going on. People are told to go to Headway because it provides services for people with a brain injury.

The same is true of ABI Ireland. It has been seeking additional funding for case managers and that links in with the national rehabilitation strategy. The Deputy talked about implementation, but the implementation plan was published and we are still no further because Covid happened in the middle of it all. That is not an excuse or even a reason, given the strategy was published in 2011. ABI Ireland operates in pockets of services that were initiated locally, perhaps by a family or a few families coming together who said they needed to get something up and running. There might then be some goodwill at the HSE and the service will be brought in. It is never a matter of the HSE coming in and saying it will deliver something. It is always a family or a number of families in an area who get together and drive this through the HSE. It comes from the bottom up rather than being a national strategy from the top down, whereby we would know what everybody gets and needs, with different strands for different categories of injured people, a discharge summary, somebody to pick up the case when the person goes out into the community and an ABI case manager who will co-ordinate the other services that are needed and manage the person's case. That is not happening but it should be.

It is frustrating when I talk to people who have been discharged from hospital without any follow-up, most likely prematurely, given our experiences in the UK. It is still the case here that if someone can walk and talk, he or she is considered to have been rehabilitated in respect of a brain injury, but the real damage is underneath and does not come to the fore, as Ms Bardon said. It is only when the person goes home, having suffered a brain injury and stroke, and becomes aware of all the things he or she has to relearn that he or she had been able to do theretofore, not to mention work and so on. Even actions such as making a cup of tea or brushing teeth have to be relearned and no supports are in place to do that. It is very difficult and challenging.

The problems are the same as ever. More people are living after an acquired brain injury and, as a country, we spend a lot of money on saving their lives. There is a scarcity of beds in Beaumont Hospital and no additional beds have been provided. The National Rehabilitation Hospital has not been given any additional capacity either, even though the entire place was rebuilt. As an example of the waiting lists in Beaumont, our son needed to go there some years ago for a review of medications. His epilepsy medication was causing problems such as falls and so on. He had packed his bag and was waiting to go. He was told it could be some time that week but he did not know and it went on and on. A person with a brain injury does not understand. The frustrations build and stress is caused. I had to appear on television. Do members think I wanted to do that? Do they think I wanted to attend this meeting? I did not. None of us wants to be here doing this. It is awful that we have to go out and speak in public about our private lives. It is appalling. I appeared on the six o'clock news on television and told the world at large I wanted a bed in hospital for my son, which in any civilised country he would be entitled to. That evening, suddenly, he got a bed.

That speaks to what we have had to put up with and, based on what I am hearing on the ground, it is no different today. That is a serious indictment of the health services in this country in general, and the example I outlined related to neurological services. People from throughout the country vie for a bed in the national neurology centre but the beds are not there. The resources are not there and an adequate number of neurologists are not there. That is to say nothing of the people who cannot get a bed in the National Rehabilitation Hospital. There is a waiting list and some will never make it there. They will never that support and discharge Ms Bardon mentioned. It is appalling.