Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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First, I welcome everybody in the Gallery. It is great to see people in here listening to what is going on. I would like to say to the participants here that it is not easy. I feel the frustration that is building up but I also feel the energy they have to do something that needs to be done.

On the overall strategy on neurology services, Galway is a black hole. That needs to be fixed. Mr. Grogan spoke about having to pay for an ambulance to bring Shane to Dublin. It cost him €1,000 just to get an X-ray to see if somebody would do something with Shane's teeth. We have to get beyond this.

I am concerned about the spread of the services across the country. It is not equal. Some places have some services, although not enough, and other places have none at all. We need to make sure we get that right, and that is going to take time. There also needs to be more encouragement from Government for the HSE to make sure it happens.

Coming back to An Saol Foundation, I have looked at the drawings and the design team. I come from a construction background and it has the elite of the elite doing work for it. I understand they have offered to do this for it. I just hope the HSE does not come along and say it is going to do it its way. If it does, we are in trouble, as are the witnesses' sons and daughters because it will go the way other projects go. I am not being critical; I am being factual. As a committee, if we are to do a report on this, we have to make sure we say that this is a project that we can do differently and show how things should be done right. That is important.

If we keep going the way we are going in terms of delivery, we will end up in a situation where Shane will still be in Green Park nursing home or in the new nursing home, if opened. Other people will be frustrated by the whole thing.

Our witnesses are here telling their personal stories. I know first hand what Joe, Joan, Sarah and the family go through everyday as normal. People listening to this for the first time may find this shocking. I said when I came to the committee first that there are things that happen that we, as politicians, should not be proud of. Listening to the witnesses' stories today, we should not be proud of where we have left a lot of these people. They are our citizens and who need their rights to be upheld. It is up to us to do that. We heard as powerful a presentation today as I ever heard and it is important that we take it on board rather than paying lip service to it.

As Deputy Coveney said, we had the budget yesterday. We will now see the HSE’s delivery programme. We have an opportunity, as a committee, to maybe funnel into that and to see what we can do to progress this rather than just putting it in a report.