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

I am glad to get the opportunity to speak. We have a duty of care as elected representatives and must ensure all the people who present sick, ill or whatever get a fair and proper assessment and are dealt with in a professional way as soon as possible. The Government has published the national primary care plan. I do not give it much credence. I have listened to too many plans, reports and proposals that never seem to take off. My brother, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae, rightfully, praised the ambulance crews. The ambulance crews themselves are fine and do their job as well and as efficiently as ever they can. In recent times, a 94 year old woman was waiting for two hours for an ambulance in east Kerry. That is a fact and it is not a joke. Likewise, another person in mid-Kerry waited for two hours for an ambulance. That was not happening in Kerry up until a certain thing was done by the HSE, which it called the "reconfiguration" of the ambulance service. That was the word it used. What it actually meant was a reduction in ambulance services. When the ambulance leaves Killarney with a patient for Cork University Hospital, CUH, when it drops off the patient, the ambulance is told to press a button in the ambulance as they are coming out of CUH saying they are available for work. Instead of going back to Killarney to deal with the Killarney people, that ambulance could finish down in Fermoy, Youghal, Mitchelstown, in any part of Cork or even could be sent to Limerick. That is what is happening. That leaves Kerry exposed until some other ambulance comes back to Kerry, which does not happen because the flow of ambulances is to the bigger hospital. We are left waiting for two hours. Then we have ambulances with personnel from Cork and other places struggling to find places in Kerry. When they were asked to go to Lispole they went to Listowel. Simple things like that. I imagine the Minister of State does not know the distance between Lispole and Listowel. Things like that are still happening.

We are talking about patient care. None of us knows the hour when we will get sick. A man rang me yesterday evening about his wife. She is doubled over with pain. She got a letter saying she is on a waiting list to be called for an endoscopy assessment. We went after it and found that if the doctor would say it was serious and urgent, she would be called within eight days but if that did not happen, she would be waiting doubled over for practically three months. That is not good enough when someone is in pain. It is the same with people with pain in their hip or knees. If they are just on a medical card, they will have to wait and stay awake at night with pain. That is not good enough. That is the health service as it is operated at the minute.

I raised the issue of home help here today. The Government is all talk about keeping people in their own homes as long as possible. That is not happening because the home help hours are being cut. In one instance a woman asked the home help, who had just 20 minutes in the evening, if she could cook a dinner for her. The home help said, "I cannot. I can give you a shower and I can give you a sandwich." The woman said to me, "Danny, to hell with the showers. I am showered to death. I am actually hungry." That is God's gospel truth. I am not adding one iota to it. Cutting the home help time to 20 minutes is ridiculous.

I refer to people with disabilities. I am talking about children who are born to a mother and father who are going to have a disability, mental or physical, for all the days of their life. This is a terrible cross and a burden on families to which it happens, but that is nature, that is life, that is the cross they have been given. I feel for those parents when they get elderly. I know a family where the father is 75 years and the mother is 79. They are very worried about where their 57 year old disabled son is going to finish up. They are still taking him in the car to meet the bus to go to day centres. The biggest worry they have now is not the problem of seeing after him but what is going to happen to him when they are gone. That is their worry. That is replicated right around the county of Kerry which I represent. I know so many people in that position. The Government is failing in that regard. It is failing to do anything about it. The Minister of State should not shake his head because I know it is and know the people who are involved. The Government wanted to put some of these disabled people in decongregated settings to put them out into the communities. I told the Minister of State about some of these people before. They are not able for it and will never be. I know one child - I still call her a child but she is 46 years of age - who is blind and is balled up in a little ball. She does not know anything but they have her kept alive in St. Mary of the Angels and the Government wanted to take her out of it. That is very wrong. The Government has some people taken out of it and is paying €600,000 and €700,000 a year to keep them in a decongregated setting. That is where the Government is spending the money wrong.

People in pain are not being seen after and I just do not give credence to these primary care plans and all other plans. There are so many little things the Government could do to ensure that when people are in pain and need help, they should be seen to, no matter if they just have a medical card. The only way we can get some of those people seen to is to send them into the accident and emergency department and tell them not to come out until they are seen. Otherwise they would remain in pain for weeks or probably until they died.

My father fought hard to get a new community hospital for Kenmare. Only half of it is open still, 80 years on. There is only one respite bed and families trying to care for elderly people and doing their best to keep them in their homes for as long as possible. They need a break. The hospital in Kenmare services from Poulgorm Bridge all the way to Caherdaniel, practically as far as Waterford, and back the other end of the peninsula as far as Lauragh. To think that hospital can only cater for 26 patients in a year.

That is what is going on. The lucky patients get two weeks. That is what we get when we divide 26 patients over 52 weeks. That is all that is being catered for, while there are still 18 or 20 beds to be opened in that hospital. There is talk about the difficulty of getting nurses. There would be no problem if they were paid properly. It is the same story in Dingle Community Hospital. There were between 22 and 24 patients on trolleys in University Hospital Kerry, Tralee, in the middle of the roasting summer. That is wrong. I do not think the Government understands this. We have five Ministers responsible for health in the Government and we still do not have a proper health service for people who are sick. I am sorry. I have nothing personal against the Minister of State but I have to point out what the people we represent are telling us.

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