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

I, too, want to speak to this very important topic. It is important to have good governance and to have systems and checks to make sure the people operating in the healthcare service are up to standard. A person driving a digger has to have proper tickets, safe passes etc. before they are allowed onto a building site. That applies to any job of work now, rightly so. We must have standards. If there are standards in every other walk of life, surely to God, we must have the proper checks and mechanisms to prevent situations of the kind that have arisen. This is not confined to any particular place. Throughout the country there have been instances of people operating in hospitals who were not up to scratch and fell far short of the mark. When people enter the health service, they expect to get the very best. They expect radiographers, people reading scans etc. to be excellently trained people with no blemishes on their records. I will be only too glad to put my shoulder to the wheel in any way possible to support the Government in ensuring this happens.

As has been highlighted by others, we have to talk about the health service in that regard. I take the opportunity to talk about GPs, the excellent service they give and the way they are being treated so badly by the Minister of State and the Government. Rural GPs are struggling. When many of us were younger, the local GP was seen as a person of means because it was such a good job. It should be classified that way, but unfortunately that is not the case now. I know of many struggling GPs in rural areas. Keeping their businesses open is not paying. With all the overheads, the constraints placed upon them by the Department and the fact that they are getting so little support from the Government, it is simply not profitable to run a rural GP service. I want to say how important the rural GP service is in all our localities, including south Kerry, where I am from, east Kerry, west Kerry, north Kerry and every village and community that has a doctor or GP running a service. It is awfully important.

7 o’clock

Recently, cases were brought to my attention of certain towns and villages that have no visiting service, although there was one previously. Will the Minister of State explain the reason for that? Why is the Government not supporting GPs who want to deliver a healthcare service in areas that are closest to those who want to avail of it? We were always told that a stitch in time saves nine, and that is the case. If a person, be he or she elderly, young or middle aged, goes to a GP with a minor complaint, even if there is a more serious issue underlying it, if it is caught in time by a good local GP, it will save a person needing significant medical intervention at enormous cost subsequently. It is important to keep every local service.

Deputy Michael Collins referred to the issue I will now raise. Last Saturday I welcomed back to County Kerry a busload of patients from Kerry. I send patients on a bi-weekly basis to the North. It is a shame that I must do so on the Minister of State’s watch. There are five Ministers for Health and the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, is one of them. It is a shame that people have to leave their home and go to the North to get cataracts removed. One would think at this stage the Minister of State would be so embarrassed and ashamed hearing about it and that politicians have to provide such a service. The service has expanded as I am now sending younger people for other procedures such as tonsil removal, hip operations and knee operations. Every week in my clinics I advertise the fact that people must contact the office, ring Martina or Jackie – the telephone number is provided – and give them their details. We arrange the appointments, hotels and buses and we take people up to the North to have this vital service provided. In many cases we stop people going blind.

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