Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for a non-response. I do not mean this in a personal way as the response was clearly written by a civil servant to protect the inadequacies of the HSE and the injustices perpetrated by it and the State. Everybody we spoke to today has had a family member with the illness or has had it themselves. Everybody we spoke to told us that the German model is the most efficient and the best to follow to deal with the illness. I did not realise it was so simple but intervention with a treatment of antibiotics at an early stage is a solution. We need to set up specialist centres to deal with it and it is within the power of the Government to do that. The rubbish we have been given by way of a response today, and which the Minister of State was given to come into the House and read out, does not in any way address the issues. It is hiding behind the HSE and a profession that has been discredited by what has happened to the people we met today.

I ask the Minister of State to go back into the system, starting with the setting up of a specialist centre to identify the cause, and work with the German model, which is the most successful in Europe and probably the world, to resolve the issue.

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