Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

The Minister was talking about an average life expectancy but, as she knows, averaging can be a dangerous science. It is like the woman who found her head in the fridge and her legs in the fire, but on average she was supposed to be all right. We are talking about a cohort of Irish people who could not have a more difficult situation. I am one of the many TDs who had the good fortune to be briefed a couple of weeks ago by BRÍ and the Irish Heart Foundation. I am ashamed that there are many aspects of the matter about which I was not fully aware. In the coming years, I will do everything I can to ensure that the route of those who suffer an acquired brain injury — as a result of an accident at work, on the road or a stroke — will not be like this. People with such injuries are brought to Beaumont Hospital and get a very good service but it is limited. Invariably the ambulance is soon on its way back to the local hospital. Unfortunately, that is only a limbo because local hospitals do not have the expertise to deal with brain injury. They do the best they can with a view to gaining admission for such patients to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire.

Over the past five years, I have spent endless hours talking to consultants, bed managers, HSE managers and others but to no avail. I can think of two or three people in County Galway who are lying in a vegetative state in a hospital bed that was never intended for them. It is an awful tragedy.

The one thing we have learned from the debate is that, as the Minister said in her speech, there will not be a single additional bed in Dún Laoghaire until 2012 at the earliest. They are seeking planning permission in mid-2008. Unless I have misunderstood, that sort of timetable will go back by three or four years. We can take it therefore that the immense pressure on the National Rehabilitation Hospital from all over the country will continue for the next seven or eight years because there will not be one extra bed. Shame on the Minister and on the Government.

See this speech in context