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

As I stated, the priority will be to establish an implementation structure in order to guide the development of services. Services will need to be determined and informed by clear referral and service protocols which are developed nationally and implemented consistently throughout the health care system. I reiterate that on the basis that we know how to implement it. The difficulty is pulling together all of the services that already exist, not only within the Dublin region but throughout the country. Those services were fragmented to a significant degree, but they were there. With the hub-and-spoke approach, which is, I believe, the one that we should follow, one would have the hub, which is centralised within the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, and the other areas would develop on a consultation basis, with rehabilitation consultants in different areas delivering services.

The most important issue - which, as an elected representative, I am aware that others hear about as well - is the constant cry to get people into an appropriate bed in that rehabilitation hospital. Even when this country was awash with money, that need was there, but it was not given any great freedom to develop. We have decided to allow that development to go ahead and we will be providing whatever resources are necessary to ensure that the hospital is redeveloped, because we need additional capacity and it has the expertise. As I stated, I do not want to refer to individual cases, but in the event that someone in a crisis situation had easier access to a bed within that type of specialist centre, I am not saying the outcome would have been different, but I believe that the security within the family would probably have been different.

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