Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Ms Cronin has made her point really well. When we are talking about day care centres, particularly for elderly people, nowadays you very frequently find couples who are 40 or 50 years married when one becomes frail and needs respite. The person looking after him or her also needs some time to themselves and this is where day care centres come into their own. I am sure we will hear about the impact on the families making use of the three units we are talking about today. Not being able to get away from somebody you are caring for is detrimental to both parties. It is detrimental to the individual and to the carer looking after him or her. We do not look after our carers.

I have a couple of questions to throw out and then the witnesses can answer them. The first relates to the HIQA element. Deputy Canney has made a point today that county councillors have made to me many times. We are told decisions are made by HIQA. We saw this in one of the hospitals we are going to talk about a little bit later on. Who asked HIQA? What brief was it given? Did it walk in on its own and decide to shut the place down? How did that come about? When we look at Tipperary in a little while, we will see how you can find that information out. You find it out in great big blacked-out pieces of rubbish like the document I am holding. Has anybody come and explained that?

On my other question, I hate to say this to Mr. Quinn but he showed us some photographs. Deputy Canney said the centre is getting €1 million. That is great so what is Mr. Quinn's beef? Why does he not just take the €1 million and do up the place that is there? Is it not fine? Lots of communities around the country would love €1 million. I have to play devil's advocate here. I do not know what his beef is. The centre is getting €1 million. The staff need their coffee space over where the day care centre was. It really comes down to that. Where is the Topping Trust in all of this? I would like to know that. I will leave it at that because we will have more later on.