Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Office of the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this very important issue which relates to the health centre in Gort in south Galway. I was invited to visit this health centre some weeks before Christmas by a number of patients using the facility. Before I visited the centre, they had told me about the facilities which they felt they were completely inadequate. As I said, I took the opportunity to visit the health centre some weeks before Christmas and found the building in quite a deplorable state. It is a building more from 1914 than a building suitable for 2014. The rooms in it are much too small and are completely inadequate. It simply cannot provide the level of care it aims to provide to the people for whom it aims to provide such care.

The staff are located in a small corner of the building and they do not even have a proper filing system. Given the Government is trying to direct more people towards the primary care system, this is certainly not an advertisement for it. The Gort health centre needs considerable upgrading. I understand Gort was on the list for primary care centres. Where was it on that list and why was it not selected? I do not know all about the centres throughout the country but this one should have been selected because it is in desperate need of upgrading.

There is a room available in the centre which was used by the Department of Social Protection. It has since left the centre to go to new offices in Loughrea in County Galway. If that facility was handed over by the Department of Social Protection to the HSE, it could kit out that room as a sort of stop-gap measure at least to facilitate the staff and give them a proper office to work in. It might even allow for an extra room where the staff could treat the patients who use the service.

I would like answers to some of these questions. It is unacceptable that there is not a new primary care centre at this stage because the health centre is in a deplorable state. The facilities there need to be upgraded as soon as possible. It is simply not adequate for the people of Gort and south Galway who use it.

See this speech in context