Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The budget gave tax cuts of up to €600 million and yet our elderly people in Limerick, across the mid-west and elsewhere in the country are facing a funding shortage for the fair deal scheme. That is wrong. The people know it is wrong. The Minister for Health needs to take some positive steps to address the situation. It is simply not good enough. The Government's budget gave a tax break to high earners and it is penalising the people who built this country.

I have raised it with the Minister and he will be aware of the crisis in the accident and emergency unit in University Hospital Limerick. When he next visits Limerick I ask him to take the opportunity to go to the University Hospital Limerick to see the absolutely chronic conditions which nurses, doctors, staff and patients must suffer. The physical built environment in which the accident and emergency unit operates is so unfit for purpose that it is bordering on criminal. National and local patient support groups are calling public meetings on the matter. I know the Minister is well informed about the situation and that he is concerned about it. I ask him to take steps to address the situation and to visit Limerick to see it for himself.

I have raised with the Minister the issue of primary care. The HSE must roll out the primary care centres. The HSE primary care model is bureaucratic and it throws too many impediments in the way of general practitioners entering into arrangements with the HSE to provide primary care centres. I acknowledge that those primary care centres already in operation are very successful. However, the property estate management section of the HSE is a bureaucratic nightmare in how it interacts with general practitioners and the bureaucratic hoops which the GPs must negotiate to reach an arrangement with the HSE to establish a primary care centre. These centres are hugely valuable in communities and they will help to alleviate the numbers presenting at accident and emergency units and address the issues associated with the elderly by keeping them living in their homes and so ease the pressures on the health service.

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