Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The Taoiseach has just told the House how much better off the public finances are than had been anticipated. I want to tell the House about a man from Ballybunion called Tony O'Gorman who drove to my clinic on 7 April to tell me about his wife, who had been diagnosed as a multiple sclerosis sufferer and who has been awaiting the implantation of a Baclofen pump for two years because she is in permanent pain. She has been on morphine for nine months. My office and I have done everything we can. We have been in touch with the Minister, the hospital, the consultant, the Minister's office and the Health Service Executive but nothing has happened.

I will outline the situation to the House in Mr. O'Gorman's own words in a letter he wrote to me on 24 May:

As you previously know, Breda is disimproving by the day and at this stage, even to put her into bed or take her out, she is in cruel agony and ends up in tears morning and night. She has the district nurse and an assistant to take her up in the morning and to do normal procedures like washing her and dressing her pressure sores, which are not improving, only getting worse — it is very near to the bone — in time. As the infection in the sore is not decreasing it could very easily turn to gangrene which could be the cause of Breda losing a leg if action is not taken in time.

Every morning she is removed from the bed to the wheelchair and has to be moved from chair to chair several times a day in order to get relief from the pain and the spasms. This is an awful discomfort to her on a daily basis. She remains in this state every day and is unable to go anywhere as the pain would be too much.

As you previously know, she is taking 30 tablets a day and is so confused from these tablets that she is sleeping nearly 24 hours now. When she wakes it takes her a while to register where she is, forgetting a lot of every day things. She also has a pump on her which dispenses a drug called midazolam. This drip is injected into her 24 hours a day. This is to relieve spasm but she is only too prone to the tablets now and to the drip that it has occurred that they have no effect on her anymore. My daughter, who also cares for her, puts her to bed at night and found Breda to be stiffening in her upper body. That is due to the lack of physiotherapy. The procedure of physio cannot be started until she has the pump implanted, and her arms have weakened in the last few months also. We have tried everything at this stage and in our opinion we have nothing to lose if this goes public.

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