Dáil debates

Wednesday, 20 February 2019

Confidence in the Minister for Health: Motion

 

4:15 pm

Photo of Stephen DonnellyStephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Tucked away on the outskirts of Galway city is the Galway Autism Partnership, an amazing organisation that is providing badly needed support for children and parents. In Shankill St. Joseph's Nursing Home has revolutionised dementia care in Ireland. The National Maternity Hospital in Dublin city now has a foetal MRI scanner which greatly increases the ability to detect foetal and fatal foetal abnormalities and there are paediatric radiologists who can use it. Carers, volunteers and healthcare professionals throughout the country work hard and every day succeed in making the healthcare system better and more effective and compassionate, but they do this not because of the Government but, largely, despite it.

The Galway Autism Partnership has exhausted its fundraising. It needs €70,000 per year from the Government to survive or it will close in six weeks. So far, it has received no funding. St. Joseph's Nursing Home in Shankill receives far less from the HSE than the HSE pays its own nursing homes and its model of care which is revolutionary is now at risk. In the National Maternity Hospital the foetal MRI scanner lies unused because funding has not been released to use it.

In the past four years the Government's spending on healthcare has increased by more than €4 billion. It is one of the highest figures in Europe, yet somehow people in Ireland wait longer to see doctors and receive treatment than anywhere else in Europe. We have the second lowest number of hospital beds per capitaand the lowest level of consultants in Europe. Mental health services are in crisis and general practice has been hollowed out. Some children with special needs are waiting three and a half years for an intervention. Children with scoliosis cannot undergo assessments for a wheelchair, while 10,000 children are waiting for more than 18 months for a hospital appointment. Why is this happening? It is because the Government has lost control of healthcare.

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