Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Independents 4 Change for bringing forward the motion and our spokesperson for sharing time. I will discuss the practicalities of this issue. The Minister of State's office and mine have communicated very well for the past number of weeks and months about this issue.

There is an issue in my local community healthcare organisation, CHO 2, at present and I know of six patients in Merlin Park, one of whom was discharged in the past two weeks and was fortunate enough to get personal assistance hours. Five other patients who have acquired conditions over the past number of weeks and months cannot be discharged because their medical practitioners have asked about the allocated hours required for them. One woman cannot be discharged because she requires 47 hours of personal assistance.

Age is an important issue that we need to discuss. Those aged under 65 years who have had an acquired brain injury, a farm accident or a life-altering experience are not acknowledged in any way on a statutory footing. They have to wait for services. The six patients I mentioned who have been left in Merlin Park are all aged under 65 years and have families at home. One woman has waited six months to be discharged. She has four young children under 15 years of age and all she wanted to do was to be at home and to have a couple of hours in which she could witness her children going to school in the morning. She was denied that because the funding basis could not be found for her. The same is the case for the other five patients I mentioned.

It costs €800 a day to keep a person in a bed in Merlin Park. Given the amount of money spent over seven days and whatever number of weeks, personal assistance hours could be provided on an annual basis for five people for an entire year if the sums were done correctly. I ask the Minister of State and his Department to review the cases of the 291 people affected because behind each number, there is a family and situation which we are being prevented from addressing.

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