Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion for obvious reasons, but also because it typifies the lack of coherence and planning that goes into so many of our health services. One would think that where we have a predisposition to a disease we would have developed some expertise in the management and treatment of it. As a nation we have a genetic predisposition to cystic fibrosis and this has been known for years. It comes as no surprise to those who plan our health service. One would have thought against that background that a thinking Government and forward-planning health service would have built a world-class service for sufferers, that we would have become a repository for research-based knowledge in the management and treatment of the illness, that we would have become the experts, have had services second to none and have been the model for the rest of the world, which would come to us to see how to treat cystic fibrosis. However, our services cannot even provide sufferers with a clean bedroom. With such a high incidence of the disease, by now we should have developed services that would give the best possible outcomes to sufferers. They should have a high life expectancy, instead people with cystic fibrosis here die younger than do sufferers from the disease in most other European countries. The rate in that respect is certainly higher here than it is in our near neighbour, which does not have anything like the incidence of the disease Ireland has.

Some of my colleagues have said that people with cystic fibrosis are extremely prone to infection. We are all prone to infection. Infection is not good for any of us, but we can fight it. However, for these sufferers, it can be fatal. The health service exposes them to infection not when they are well but when they are sickest, when they have to go to an accident and emergency department when their health is already compromised. It is no wonder they are out campaigning on the streets despite the level of their illnesses. When they are transferred from an accident and emergency department to a hospital bed, they do not even have a room or toilet to themselves. The toilets in some of our hospitals, even if they were used by people who were not sick, are no joy to behold. I have visited the toilets in St. Vincent's Hospital and I have received endless complaints about them. I have not seen the toilet facilities in the new buildings and cannot speak about them but in the older part of the hospital, they are not facilities one would like to be sharing with anybody.

My first exposure to cystic fibrosis was in the general election campaign in 1997 when a neighbour's son, who was the same age as my son, died tragically waiting for a heart-lung transplant. As a result of the campaign at that time the heart-lung transplant unit was built in the Mater Hospital. I mention this because it is another example of the absence of any kind of coherent planning to develop the full range of services required. Some of my colleagues have said that only one cystic fibrosis patient has had a transplant operation since the unit was built. That was the medical advice at the time but nevertheless it went ahead. To start with the provision of a Rolls Royce unit, the heart-lung transplant unit, when the very basic facilities are not provided, when there is not even a clean bedroom for such patients, is a nonsense. At best, it is bad planning and, at worse, it is criminal.

This is another example of the Government's ad hoc approach, with the provision of these services being on and then off. The services for such patients throughout the country are deficient or are being provided by means of fundraising. Various Government backbenchers have said such provision has been a priority for Government since 2006. If it has, what happened in terms of the recommendations in the Pollock report produced in 2005? The lack of planning continues.

I would be extremely sceptical about giving a builder or developer in the private sector the responsibility of carrying the cost of building the proposed unit until it is completed in two or three years time. It is not realistic. Most builders cannot carry the cost of their wage bill until this weekend, never mind for two years.

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