Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Health will be aware that it is proposed to reconfigure the Shannon Doc out-of-hours GP services in the mid-west region, which will affect services in west and north Clare and involve the closure of services in Killaloe. This is unacceptable, short-sighted and a betrayal of people who live in rural areas. The areas of east and west Clare that are under threat as a result of the proposal to reduce services are some of the most isolated locations in terms of health care not just in County Clare but in the country as a whole. I suggest that if the Government fails to intervene in this issue, it will be yet another example of the manner in which it has turned its back on people from rural parts of the country. People in rural areas should expect to be able to access the same health services as those living in towns and cities. I refer, in particular, to those who have access to such services.

The out-of-hours Shannon Doc scheme has worked very well by treating patients in their communities. I do not doubt that any attempt to undermine the availability of access to Shannon Doc services on the part of rural communities will lead to delays in diagnosis and will place greater pressure on the accident and emergency department at Limerick University Hospital, which is already over-stretched. The HSE and the local doctors need to sit down to thrash out this problem and find a solution other than that which has been proposed. I do not accept that a small reduction in the number of doctors participating in the scheme is enough to require the drastic closure of the service in west and north Clare and in the east Clare area around Killaloe. Equally, I do not accept that the number of patients attending these services in some way justifies the discontinuation of the current service. I appeal to the Minister to talk to the officials in the Department of Health and to put in place a forum with the GPs and all the interested parties so that a solution to this problem can be found. It is not enough to say to the people in these areas that they must all be pulled into a single area because there are not enough doctors or service users.

My local radio station, Clare FM, recently aired a report about the mother of a three year old child who suffers from severe asthma on a regular basis. When the child had an asthma attack on a recent Sunday night, this woman and her child rushed to the out-of-hours GP service in Kilrush and the child was successfully treated with a strong dose of nebulisers. The nature of what happens to asthmatic children means that this mother and many others regularly need to make such visits. She is deeply concerned about what will happen when such an event in the life and the health of her child occurs again. She absolutely believes she would not have time to get to Ennis, or perhaps Milltown Malbay as is now proposed. Therefore, the closure of the service in Kilrush has the potential to have a very negative impact on her family. The same concerns are being expressed in Ennistymon and Killaloe for a variety of reasons.

This service is funded by the State. This model was put in place to eliminate the need for people to present unnecessarily in accident and emergency departments. That is something we all talk about and we all need to see happen. We are attempting to solve a problem that does not exist in a way that will ultimately drive more people into our accident and emergency services at a time when they are overstretched, overburdened and unable to cater for and cope with the demand that exists. I appeal to the Minister to put the thinking caps on in the Department of Health so that some level of sanity can prevail.

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