Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State is aware, there is a severe shortage of rehabilitation services in the Irish health care system for people living with neurological conditions such as stroke, acquired brain injury, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. It has been estimated that Ireland should have 270 inpatient beds to meet the needs of its population in this regard, but it has less than half of that number. There are no such beds outside Dublin. Numerous reports have highlighted the critical need to provide a dedicated specialist rehabilitation unit to serve the needs of people in the south of our country. Patients from the south represent one in four referrals to the National Rehabilitation Hospital. Individual reports in 2000, 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2011 pointed to the need for a special medical rehabilitation service to meet the needs of people with neurological conditions in Cork and Kerry. One of the many recommendations made in the report on the configuration of acute hospital services in Cork and Kerry, which was published by the HSE in 2011, was that a consultant in rehabilitation medicine, shared between the HSE south and the National Rehabilitation Hospital, should be appointed. The report also recommended that there should be a new regional rehabilitation medicine service with formal links to the National Rehabilitation Hospital and a named clinical lead. I ask the Minister of State to comment on what I have said.

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