Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Michael Harty and Mairead and David in Deputy Mattie McGrath's office for putting the motion together for us. It gives me the opportunity to speak on a few very important matters.

Waiting times for beds in Tralee General Hospital are unacceptable, with people waiting for two or three days. It is ridiculous. Front-line staff are an issue and we do not have enough nurses. The hospital is overcrowded and Dingle Community Hospital is only half-opened, as is the new hospital in Kenmare. We need a new facility in Killarney because the population doubles and triples at certain times of the year. We are waiting for it and have been told we are getting it but it cannot come soon enough.

In the case of St. Mary of the Angels, decongregated settings have to be reviewed. One size does not fit all. Two patients were moved out in the past three years and in June last year one of them was so agitated they kept giving him anti-psychotic drugs. He cannot talk but can lip read and they gave him 28 doses in June last year, with the result that he is now blind. He cannot talk, hear or see now and that is what the decongregated model has done to him. His family has no problem with me naming him but I will not do that. His life has effectively been ended by this.

St. Mary of the Angels is being closed by stealth. St. John of God will not take in any more patients and it will close because the patients will die off. The group is trying to do its best but HIQA is changing the goalposts and saying there is not enough room for the patients, so that they now have to fundraise and need to collect €180,000 to build three chalets so that they can keep the patients they have. Parents and friends are doing this work and they are hoping they will get money out of the ring of Kerry charity cycle. While that is happening, €750,000 is being spent on a house in Cromane to take one patient out of St. Mary of the Angels but no one is fit to go there at the moment, so grass is growing around the house. Someone is being paid to maintain it but nobody is inside. There is another patient in another town in Kerry and no one knows what it is costing. It is costing an unreal amount of money to pay all the nurses and everyone else to mind one patient when they were getting on fine in St. Mary of the Angels.

We have five Ministers in the Department of Health and a Government but I know of one poor lady who has an adult son with autism and when she goes to bed every night she locks her door because she is afraid of him. Two or three years ago a son killed his mother and it will happen again if the Minister does not wake up. There was another Minister in Kerry spouting about what money he had got from the Government to deal with these things but on the eastern side of Kerry there is no place to deal with an adult autistic child, who is still a child despite the fact they may be aged 23 or 24 and very strong. This poor woman is afraid and I ask the Minister to address these issues. He should get on his bicycle and go around to listen to the people. When I highlighted the young fella who went blind at St. Mary of the Angels, the only thing St. John of God wanted to know was who told me the story. In other words, it should not have been raised at all. These people want to keep these things in the dark but we are talking about real people, human beings who are not being looked after. They are the most vulnerable people and I appeal to the five Ministers in the Department of Health to do something about it. They know about these things and it is time to act.

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