Dr. Angela Skuce:

The Deputy asked about the Roma Covid information line, which is a very good example of the issue. We knew when Covid hit that people who could not speak English would not be able to access anything, including testing, registering for vaccines or anything like that. Very early on in the pandemic, the HSE gave funding to Cairde, which is an organisation that helps people from other countries to access their healthcare entitlements. It operates a mobile phone number that, for a long time, seems to have run 24-7, though officially it runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday. That line is manned by a member of the Roma community who is trilingual and speaks Roma languages, Romanian and English. As he works for Cairde, he can help people to get PPS numbers, medical cards and so on. He also serves as a link for people who do not speak English and also tend to have a great distrust and fear of state services. He has had hundreds of phone calls over the past year and a half from people who were at home with symptoms of Covid, some of whom were very ill, and were afraid to come forward. They were afraid that if testers arrived at their house, their neighbours would realise, their house would be burned or they would be evicted. They were afraid that if they called a doctor, they would be deported or if they went to hospital in an ambulance, they would be given an injection that would kill them and they would die. They had very deep-seated fears, in addition to the barrier of interpreting.

Even though the Capuchin clinic has been working with this community for approximately 15 years, Roma still did not trust us when it came to Covid. The Covid information line acted as a first point of contact for people who did not speak English and as a trust link. People would ring up and trust that information line. The person manning it trusts us and the other services we work with. Through that information line, he was able to refer people to us for testing and to the self-isolation facility for vulnerable groups. He was able to link people in with GP services and food delivery services, if they were self-isolating at home.

I believe very strongly that interpreting needs to be accessible to the people who need it. GPs in some areas of the country have access to interpreting services but they have to be booked by the GP. People cannot make an appointment in the first place if they cannot ring up the GP practice. There is one very good example of an interpreting project in the south east, which is the south-east Roma project. It has valuable support workers who are freely available in the community. People who share a language with those support workers can ring them up or contact them. Those workers will then phone the local hospital or the patient's GP to say that a particular person needs an interpreter and an appointment at this time.

While the HSE has very good and meaningful guidelines on the need for interpreting in healthcare, access to it is in the hands of healthcare providers who are not always best placed to decide if somebody needs an interpreter and are not available as a first point of contact. That is one matter that should be addressed. When people are ordinarily resident here, they are entitled to healthcare. It needs to be accessible and meaningful healthcare. Interpreting is part of that.