Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is right to refer to Dr. Anderson's independent report, as it is called. I should have stated that the report suggested that two of the patients require inpatient psychiatric care and the rest of those patients require general nursing care. To go back two years, I was in that centre and it is possible to have a debate with some of the people there. When one of them stands at a doorway and says "I don't want to move out of here", that causes me fear. It disturbs me. We are forcing those people out to a different environment.

I have no doubt they will get excellent care and be well looked after but why move those people out of a place that has become their home over many years? Irrespective of what psychiatrists or psychologists tell us, common sense would tell me not to take people out of there. It is like taking a person out of their home who is not suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia and telling them they have to go into a nursing home. People do not like being taken out of their own corner in general.

County Roscommon has the highest incidence of Alzheimer's in the country per head of population. We will also have more older people per head than any other county. Rather than close any of those facilities we should be opening them. Rather than getting rid of the ten patients there we should bring that centre up to full capacity. The Minister told me at a meeting this morning that it will be a residential care setting. If it is to remain as a residential care unit, why not leave these, mainly elderly, people there to live out their lives? It is not much to ask. I ask the Minister of State to go back to the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, and the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, and plead with them to ask the HSE to reverse this decision.

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