Ms Olga Wehrly:

On the geographical aspect, I live in Dublin. The reason I have stayed here is that my daughter has severe allergies and we have often ended up in hospital with her due to anaphylaxis. I live very close to hospitals but it takes so much energy to go to appointments all the time, even before I had long Covid, and EDS involves an element of fatigue. As Ms Casserly said, there is the spoon theory with regard to chronic illness in that we have a certain number of spoons and we can only use them to do a certain number of things. When people have to drive to all of these specialists and doctors that they are paying through the nose for because they cannot wait for the public system, it is all skewed towards Dublin. I really feel for people who live in more rural locations because their access and their support is much less. I also do not know of anybody who has got personal assistance.