Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The reason I let the other speakers go first is that it is their immediate area. I am very proud of this public petitions committee because it is a last chance for the likes of yourselves to be heard. That is what is powerful here. We try not to play politics inside here. It is one of the strange committees because we try to get things done. Listening to the witnesses, there is nothing I can disagree with. It is bonkers. Why try to fix something that was never broken? I hear the pain in all of our guests on different issues. I was actually worried. They are all being realists. Even if only one emergency department was restored, however, it would only be a sticking plaster. On the demographics, the population is expanding, the older population is increasing and percentages are going up. We need to be future-proofing the plan. My biggest fear is for what happens in ten or 12 years. It is major investment but it is investing in people.

The Cathaoirleach already read out what our committee can do. What is so powerful about this is that our guests have made their statements here and they are now on the record. We now have the ability to ask those questions of those who are responsible and accountable. I was wondering when Ms Moran mentioned it, and I would be interested to know who these commissions actually are and who the advisers are. They seem to be going totally against the common-sense approach and the policy approach. I sat on the Sláintecare committee, the membership of which comprised all parties and none. It was a fairly difficult job. We put politics aside because we had to come up with a plan for the benefit of everybody, our parents, our grandparents, if we are lucky enough to have them, and our kids.

The Government policy over the past number of years has been centralisation. I heard the population comparison between the mid-west and Cork and Kerry. Every one of us has been in an accident and emergency department. It is the same story around the country. People do not want to go there any more. They are afraid to go to hospital if they get sick. We can sometimes be very critical of the HSE, but it is not the front-line workers. The issue seems to be with those in top management protecting their patch and moving to privatisation instead of going in the opposite direction. The Sláintecare approach is community led, fully integrated and with each service complemented by another.

There is a massive vacuum at the moment for our guests. They have been at it a long time now and it is going to take another long time even to get something back. I seriously think that no matter what Government is in place, there has to be a major, realistic push on what kind of health service we want in the future. Even our own policy on that was working towards Sláintecare as our own national health service for the country, where it serves the people. The NHS was mentioned. My next-door neighbour is rewriting all the mental health policy over there at the moment. People do talk. This committee is very powerful. I am very glad to listen to all the statements today but it does take time even to get people in as witnesses. Now our guests have opened the door and put their thoughts on the record. They are looking for answers as to why things are not happening. At least if we get to the end of those answers, we might get the solution to why it is not happening or how it can happen again. This committee is possibly the best way to push this case forward.

I suspect there are other areas in the health service, and we are well aware of them in the mental health services, where they are moving away from the community-led models of respite care and pushing it into the cities again. It is definitely a massive policy change that is needed. Unfortunately, with policy change, if we get to the end of this one the first thing I will be trying to find out is who the advisers are and the clinicians who are advising the HSE. It happens an awful lot that there is no co-operation, things are siloed and everybody is protecting their own patch. Again, it comes down to money. Everybody is protecting their own budget instead of being like our guests, who are from all different counties, coming together, pooling their resources with a plan for an end result that benefits everybody. At least they have the model of that work and thinking. The problem we have here is that the clinicians and HSE people are led by the policy, as Ms Moran said. We have to get the clinicians, HSE and policy-makers together to come up with a realistic plan. I always say that you could keep putting the same ingredients into a pot and expect it to taste different every time. It will never taste different unless you change one of the ingredients. This is what we are going to have to do within this system.

I do not play politics with this committee. It is very powerful when it comes to giving an individual or groups their say. I keep saying that this is not our House, this is our guests' House. We are here to work on their behalf. I am a very open and realistic person. Sometimes people will not like my responses, but sometimes the truth is a bitter pill to swallow. Our guests are on the right path now. We will be able to assist them and at least we have the roadmap of who we need to bring in and we have the questions. We can get the answers and move on from their. I wish our guests the very best of luck but I suspect they will not be the only group coming in here in the next year. We have been dealing in committees with respite centres. They are closing them in Tipperary. They are probably closing one in Portlaoise. They have closed the one in Clifden. There is one down by me that was a 22-bed centre. It was lobbying and pushing that got Mr. Gloster to make a commitment to put a ten-bed unit back in there. It is a start. We have an ageing population. We had 22 beds. They have given us back ten, if we will ever see it.