Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I commend the members of the committee. It is unprecedented what they have done here, with broad political support. Some speakers said we need to take politics out of it. I have a different view in that I think politics is what is going to drive it. I listened to my colleague talk about her father telling her that everything in life is about politics, and that is the direction he gave. Deputy McGuinness spoke about the former Minister, Mary Harney's time and suggested that if things had been done differently then, and different decisions had been made, the situation might be different now. I would argue that it was when Mary Harney was in charge that the privatisation route was taken and many of these policies were put in place.

Some Members spoke about the starting point. If there is a delay in regard to the Sláintecare report and the proposals within it that will kill the report. I listened to Deputy Durkan pointing to interventions that will not work and suggesting we have to take this very slowly. As with all these things, the first question that strikes me is what are interventions that will not work in regard to this report. That is the big question. If people want to delay it, what are the concerns they have with it?

Every day on my way here I pass by the hospice in Harold's Cross. I have known a number of people who have died in the hospice. There is something special about it - the care that is delivered by the staff, the empathy, the understanding, and so on. Only for good fortune, I could have ended up there myself. I have been in the hospital system and I am still in the hospital system, so I have seen where it has worked and where it has not worked. As a public representative, I am conscious of the many successful cases that go through the system, and we need to talk that up, given there is huge delivery for people every day. However, I am also conscious that we get those cases where the system has failed people. My colleague talked about mental health and it is on that area I want to concentrate in the speaking time I have left.

I was at a board meeting of a project in my area last week. Six people connected with that project had committed suicide. A woman on the board said that for one of the groups she was involved in, she was aware of nine individuals associated with the project who had committed suicide. That is in the Tallaght area. I am conscious that families are probably listening to this debate who are still hurting. The norm is that men take their own lives but, in these cases, it was mostly women. There is a huge problem there. It is about delivering care. In some cases, people go to accident and emergency or to their doctors, but the system is broken. Collectively, we all accept there is a crisis out there and that we need to do things differently. This is one area we need to concentrate on, and I know different approaches have been suggested.

We need 24-7 care. Although the Government is talking in terms of seven-day care, it is not between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. that these things happen; it is normally at weekends and so on. Many of us have got that call. I have been in that situation where I got a call from a family to say, "My father is coming around to the house. Has he arrived?", but the father had committed suicide. I am touched by that. I want to do things differently. I want to work with people. That is what we are trying to do in this plan but we need to start doing things differently.

I would like to talk for longer about what is going on in my constituency. I was at a primary care launch where people were talking about the difficulty of going to the local hospital. We were talking in a hall in an area where 6,000 people lived with no doctor based in that area.

Again, this goes back to what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong.

I wanted to talk about disability, as the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, is here, and I wanted to talk about senior citizens, but I do not have time to do so. There will be time in future. I commend the committee on all the work it has done. We can fix the system. The message we need to send out to people is that while the system may fail some individuals, it is working well for the vast majority of people. However, we can do a lot better.

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