Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. The language used today is better. Ultimately, it is about language and we must be very careful not to discourage people from using the service when they need it. This is not a resources issue. There are 890 people working in the Galway-Roscommon service. They might not be in the right place, but they are in that area.

Those who work in this service have always dealt with very difficult people. It is the nature of the illness that people are unpredictable and do things unexpectedly. That is the reason we have professionals working in this area. We are working on this issue and must reconfigure the service. If we can have a service with the same number of staff relative to the same population base in other areas of the country that is an excellent, community based service, clearly we must examine why that is not happening in Galway-Roscommon. I genuinely believe people must embrace change. I constantly hear calls for the roll-out of A Vision for Change and people saying it is not happening quickly enough, yet when one starts to do this, one tends to meet these bottlenecks. We really must begin to look at putting the service user at the centre of all of this.

I have no doubt that people are worried. Having listened to debate of the type heard on the radio over the past two weeks, I would also be worried if I had somebody requiring the service. However, there is no need to be worried as we have a service that can be excellent. It is a safe and secure service.

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