Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Kathleen Lynch.We are winding up a debate on a Labour Party motion on the issue of care for people with acquired brain injuries. These are the thousands every year who suffer a stroke, an accident or who survive a car crash. These are the thousands who form part of the 700,000 people in Ireland living with a neurological condition, an average of one in every two households in the country.

It is time that the care of so many of our citizens, particularly rehabilitative care, became a political issue. I thank Deputies Kathleen Lynch and Jan O'Sullivan for their work in bringing this motion to the House, researching the case they made so eloquently last night and putting this issue on the political agenda, where it will remain until satisfactorily addressed. This debate is about the fundamental right of our citizens to be cared for when they are sick and cared for to the best of our ability. It is about the enormous contribution of unpaid carers, whose invaluable work needs more than gratitude. If the litmus test of a society is how its most vulnerable members are treated, then it is a debate about ourselves and our society.

An estimated 10,000 people a year suffer from some form of acquired brain injury. In total, one out of six of our fellow citizens, neighbours, spouses, parents and children, are living with a neurological condition, including acquired brain injury. However, they are not the only ones affected. Acquired brain injury can have a devastating effect on the patient's family, who often provide care and support on a 24-hour basis, and with very little assistance. A brain injury or a stroke can change a person's life, and that of his or her family, overnight. It can make a sufferer dependent on others for assistance in everyday tasks, it can change personality, and it can leave the sufferer physically impaired. It can turn a breadwinner into a dependant, and a child into a carer. The trauma of acquired brain injury can be lifelong, for both the patient and those who care for him or her.

How does our society, and the health service we pay for, respond to the silent epidemic of acquired brain injury? The good news is that appropriate rehabilitation care can make an enormous difference to the quality of life of acquired brain injury sufferers. The bad news is that Ireland only has one, 110-bed rehabilitation hospital. The exceptional work of the National Rehabilitation Hospital deserves to be recognised. It is located in my constituency and, everywhere I go, when I say I am from Dún Laoghaire, I hear nothing but praise for the NRH staff and their commitment to their patients. I welcome plans to build a new hospital on the site.

However, one hospital is simply not enough to cope with the flow of acquired brain injury patients every year. A person with a brain injury can wait up to two years for a place in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, instead of the 24 hours which is the recommended time lag between acquiring a brain injury and specialist rehabilitative care. It should come as no surprise that the Peter Bradley Foundation estimates that 69% of patients with acquired brain injury end up in inappropriate facilities, such as geriatric services. Ireland has less than half the recommended number of neurologists, and half the recommended neurosurgeons, for our population. Only six consultants in the country specialise in rehabilitation.

This shortfall in rehabilitation and specialist care is replicated in outpatient and community services. ABI patients wait up to two years to see a specialist consultant. They can wait up to three years for an appointment with a speech and language therapist, an occupational therapist or a physiotherapist. Respite care to relieve carers is scarce. None of this is news to the hundreds of thousands of sufferers of ABI and carers, for whom this is the daily reality. Nor is it news to the Minister for Health and Children or the HSE, which has commissioned no less than three reports to examine the needs of ABI sufferers since 2003.

What we need are solutions and I offer some to the Minister, Deputy Harney, and her Government. Build more regional rehabilitation beds as part of a joined-up national rehabilitation strategy. Increase the number of posts for neurologists, neurosurgeons and rehabilitation consultants in line with our population needs. Instead of cutting back frontline services in the HSE, put patients first, and employ sufficient speech therapists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists to meet the real needs of ABI sufferers. Recognise that carers are invaluable, but not inexhaustible, and provide sufficient community respite care and counselling.

Around one in six of our population lives with a condition which affects the brain. Over the next ten years, that number is expected to grow by 100,000. Delays in accessing life-altering medical and rehabilitation care are already unacceptable. Without urgent action now to deliver care that matches people's real needs, an already chronic situation is set to get worse. Let us be clear about what is being debated here. For many ABI sufferers, rehabilitation is the difference between being alive and living. For some, successful rehabilitation will mean a return to work. For others, it will mean regaining some independence and some dignity. For their families and carers, it is about being able to manage the new circumstances in which they find themselves, instead of being overwhelmed by them.

ABI sufferers, and their families, are not asking for special treatment. All they are asking for is a fair chance of recovery and dignity as well as a fair chance at living. The neglect they suffer through grossly inadequate resources and disjointed services denies them this fair chance. I ask the House to accept the Labour Party motion and take a step towards giving these patients — our fellow citizens — their due.

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