Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I appreciate the opportunity to raise this issue. This week is national brain injury week. The Ceann Comhairle and I, coming from a part of the country that is some distance from the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, know the difficulties experienced by people who acquire brain injuries. I attended a talk today in the audiovisual room in Leinster House on acquired brain injuries, the definition of which is an injury to the brain that is acquired after birth. An interesting throwaway comment made by one of the speakers was: "Look after your head because your head looks after your mind."

With a serious head injury, immediate intervention is essential to ensure the person returns to normality, if normality can be achieved. A number of years ago, a huge amount of work was put into bringing an outpatient section of the rehabilitation service to the Cork area. In fact, its location was already earmarked, namely, St. Mary's orthopaedic hospital, which has significant grounds, but the plan came to nothing — it simply did not happen. Yet, not a week goes by without public representatives in the southern region receiving phone calls from the parents, wives or siblings of someone who has acquired a brain injury and needs to be in the National Rehabilitation Hospital.

It is conservatively estimated that there are 10,000 new brain injuries every year in this country. When one considers the level of car accidents, building site accidents and assaults at the weekends, we know what is causing them. There are just 110 beds in the Republic to deal with these people. In any man's language, it is not possible to treat 10,000 new cases every year with 110 beds. A recent report tells us that there are 20 neurologists in the country when for our population base there should be 42, and nine neurosurgeons when for our population base we should have 16. The Netherlands has 12 times the number of rehabilitation consultants per head of population than Ireland. At present, there are approximately 700,000 people with acquired brain injury and, because of the process of ageing and with people living longer, it is estimated that there will be 800,000 in ten years.

The stories, one after the other, are horrifying — I am sure we could all relate at least one or two. People with a brain injury may spend three years in a long-stay care bed but if they get the proper treatment and a proper rehabilitation process, they can be up and about, returning to normality and looking after themselves. Without doubt, this is where our resources should be invested because the impact a brain injury has on the individual and his or her family is immeasurable. The cost of keeping someone in long-term care is equally immeasurable when that person could be up and about and returning to productive life.

I raise this issue as a result of an incident that occurred in Cork in the past six months. In that case, the person was very lucky. As a result of persistent pressure, he got a bed in the National Rehabilitation Hospital and is still there and doing extremely well. The staff at the hospital are extremely professional and expert in what they do but for every one person the hospital can accommodate, it is turning away at least ten. We need a rehabilitation service in the south and we need at least double the number of beds that are available at present.

See this speech in context