Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for providing me with an opportunity to address the House on the issue of health care at Raheen Hospital, County Clare. I regret that the Health Service Executive remains a bureaucracy which is completely out of control and utterly unaccountable to democratically elected representatives at all levels. I greatly commend the Minister for Health for his moves earlier this year to have the entire board of the HSE resign and then appoint a new board. However, this signal clearly has not permeated down to the HSE representatives in the mid-west region, as borne out by recent developments in County Clare and particularly in Raheen hospital.

On Saturday, 10 September, staff at Raheen hospital were informed by e-mail that the number of respite beds would be reduced from 28 to 23. There was no discussion in advance and no inquiries about the impact this might have on care. Furthermore, they were informed that this would take effect from the following Monday morning. Patients who thought they would have a bed on Monday morning learned on Monday morning that this was not the case. This is completely unacceptable. As somebody who lives near Raheen hospital, I was aware there were difficulties there because the staff had outlined these to me. I made numerous inquiries to the HSE about what was happening but I got no information. This is not about me; it displays a contempt for the people who voted for me and for those who voted for Deputies Carey, Dooley and Breen in Clare, because they also made inquiries and similarly received no information, as did local councillors, yet the HSE persists in the circus of organising meetings and bringing in all the elected representatives to their lovely boardroom in Limerick where they ply us with generalities but give us no specific information.

The HSE was set up by the last Government and it has ballooned into a bureaucracy. It now falls upon this Government to deal with it, and I urge the Minister to do so. Furthermore, the HSE was set up to provide health care led by professionals rather than by politicians. This is simply not the case. Professionals are not being listened to in the HSE. Instead, it is being run by bureaucrats who display nothing but contempt for this House, the people who sit in it and local government.

This is borne out by what has happened to psychiatric services in Clare. I am greatly encouraged by the comments of the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, over the weekend that money would hopefully be ring-fenced for psychiatric services, because the 200 psychiatric nurses who were working in County Clare three years ago have now been reduced to less than 150. There are now rumours that psychiatric units in Tipperary, particularly in Clonmel hospital, are due to close and that all north Tipperary patients will be sent to Ennis. Initially, staff in Ennis were informed they would receive 14 new nursing posts to cope with the demand; now they are expected to receive only five. The psychiatric day care centre in my town was closed on 26 August. It had been manned five days a week up to May 2011 and two days a week since then. Some of the patients who attended that day care centre were not even informed that it was to close. That is simply unacceptable in 2011. Some of those psychiatric patients showed up on the Monday morning at the day care centre to find it closed. A little bit of communication with elected representatives, or with the population, would go a long way.

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