Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In supporting the motion of no confidence in the Minister, Deputy Reilly, I will make use of an example. Two weeks ago, one of my constituents contacted me and his experience really exposed the problems that exist within the agency and which the Government promised it would try to fix. It is a simple problem that should not be there. My constituent, Mr. Dermot Walsh, who is a well-known disability rights advocate and has no difficulty with my use of his name and who I contacted beforehand, uses his wheelchair to get to work. However, he has been unable to so do in recent weeks because of the bureaucratic incompetence of the HSE. The system for carrying out repairs to wheelchairs has changed in that heretofore, he was able to contact his engineer and have the maintenance to his wheelchair dealt with regularly.

This arrangement was recently changed by the HSE and all repairs are now done in house. One of the wheels fell off his wheelchair and he needed to get it fixed very quickly. However, under the new arrangement his wheelchair had to go into the health clinic. That wheelchair was assessed in his absence and without consultation with him. This flies in the face of the so-called person-centred consultation. As a consequence, it is unsafe and he has been waiting for more than four weeks for his wheelchair to be fixed. The assessment proposed a number of changes to be made but he does not want them as they are not needed and he is still out of work. While I am not blaming the Minister for that, his actions in cuts in home help, home-care, PAs etc. fit very well into the bureaucratic penny-pinching approach to health care and the Minister should go.

Mr. John Dolan, chief executive of the Disability Federation of Ireland, has said that despite promises in the programme for Government to enhance the quality of life for people with disabilities, the Government was going in the other direction. All Government members should go back to the people to seek a mandate for what they are doing at the moment.

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