Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Doyle, to the House. It is not his fault. This is a matter specifically to do with health. It is good to have the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with responsibility for food, forestry and horticulture here to give the response but it does not inspire confidence in the level of prioritisation we are giving to key matters when he should be engaged in important work in his own brief and he is being sent in here to give a pre-written response by some official in the Department.

I wrote, on 3 May, to the Minister in relation to a patient who has given her express permission to mention her name and wishes it to be mentioned. Ms Haughney lives in Sligo. She has cerebral palsy, asthma, arthritis and a shoulder complaint. The seriousness of the condition is such that she is in a wheelchair.

Under the Government's report, Time to Move on from Congregated Settings – A strategy for Community Inclusion, in 2011, Louise moved from residential care to independent living with a range of supports including physiotherapy, access to an occupational therapist on demand, home help hours or personal assistance hours. Obviously, she was given access to a wheelchair. She had a social worker, a case co-ordinator and a GP.

What has happened since is Louise has effectively been abandoned by the system. Through no fault of her own, she has not been provided with essential physiotherapy since 2015. She has had no access to occupational therapists since April 2017, despite requesting and urgently needing one since July 2017 given her condition, and an urgent requirement for a new mould for her wheelchair. She has no back-up wheelchair. She has had no social worker since August-September 2017 and she has no case co-ordinator since a year ago.

In a letter, Ms Haughney's GP states that in the past he sat around the table at primary care meetings, which are obviously time consuming, with all these individuals and it appears now that he is the only individual left on her primary care team. He writes that she has been abandoned by the system, stating that this is an absolute joke. The occupational therapist, who is the acting primary care occupational therapist, wrote back stating that she has seen some service users in Sligo town but just does not have the capacity to see Louise.

I put it to the Minister of State that if this was the subject of an "RTÉ Investigates" programme, which may not be far away, or an afternoon hearing on the Joe Duffy show, this Chamber would be alive with calls of condemnation for the fact that this vulnerable person has been abandoned by the system. Ms Haughney loves living independently and loves her home. She was thriving with the supports that were put in place that the Government and those it manages have stripped out.

Since this letter went to the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, on 3 May, I received the standard acknowledgement from the Department. I also sent a message to the director general of the HSE, now out of post, whose replacement referred it to the parliamentary affairs division.

In the meantime, nothing has happened to this lady. On the back of a referral from this doctor months ago, she was contacted by the community physiotherapist who, with an over-the-phone consultation, decided she needed to see an occupational therapist first before she saw the physiotherapist. We are going around in circles. I am beginning to know where all the managers are in our health service. They are all talking to each other, writing to each other and referring to one another and the people who need care are being abandoned.

I appreciate it is not the Minister of State's brief and it is not his fault he was sent here today but it is an indication of the level of autopilot and hands-off approach we are taking when it comes to individuals' care. She wanted her name mentioned; it is Louise Haughney of McNeill Drive, Sligo. I want to know by the end of the day that people have contacted her about occupational therapy, about moulding a new seat for her wheelchair, about providing the additional hours she needs and about providing the physiotherapy, occupational therapy and all other services she needs because it is unacceptable. If I do not hear from her today, I will telephone the people from RTÉ "Prime Time Investigates" and bring them to visit her at her home.

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