Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Access to Community Neurological Rehabilitation Teams: Discussion

Ms Magdalen Rogers:

I thank the Deputy for raising the situation in CHOs 6 and 7. The funding has been available for those teams since November 2020. Serious questions need to be asked as to why recruitment has not even started for those teams at this stage.

We hope that those timelines are adhered to and that those teams will be up and running by the end of the year. It would be critical to have them up and running by that time in view of the delays that have been experienced. A patient advocate recently told me the one thing that people with neurological conditions and neurorehabilitative needs do not have is time. We cannot have a situation where there are queries about a governance model; these teams need to be put in place on the ground. There needs to be equitable access to these teams nationwide.