Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will share time. I will take the first five minutes. Maybe the Minister and I could go back and forth, with the Ceann Comhairle's permission.

I would like to start by expressing my sympathies as well with the friends and families of the many women and men who have now died. This has come at an extraordinary cost so far. It is a very difficult time for anyone who is trying to mourn a loved one or a lost friend. I would also like to acknowledge that without the extraordinary work of our healthcare professionals and, indeed, of every individual and family in this country, that tragic number would be an awful lot higher. Much good work has happened.

I would like to talk to the Minister about getting the non-Covid healthcare going as quickly as possible. I cite the following case with the permission of the family involved. Callum is a five year old boy from Wicklow. He lives close to where the Minister and I live. He has Down's syndrome and he has unfortunately many medical conditions associated with that. Here is what his Mum, Gillian, told me earlier this week:

Callum is my lovely boy. He started walking in 2019 after so much hard work. A year and a half ago, it was felt he had juvenile arthritis and he was referred to rheumatology in Crumlin. Callum needs an MRI scan under sedation for this treatment. His scan is scheduled for next year, two years from when his doctor said he needed it.

Callum is in pain. He is pre-verbal so he cannot tell us when he is in pain or where the pain is. His doctors need the MRI done so that they can limit the damage to his body.

Callum's arthritis recently flared up so he cannot walk much anymore. He seems to have a lot of pain in his hips and his hands and he is now on very strong painkillers. This week, his doctors in Crumlin thankfully decided to start the treatment but to do so without the MRI, and to try and provide what care they can.

Callum needs physiotherapy twice a week. He has not had any for six weeks now.

That is Callum's situation.

My question is why is the urgent therapeutic care in the community, including physiotherapy, not happening now? We have people going into work in supermarkets and other places without personal protection equipment, PPE, who are public facing. It would seem the trained clinicians, such as physiotherapists, with PPE should now be able to re-engage in urgent cases, such as Callum's. I would like to hear the Minister's thoughts on that.

On the Minister's point on the private hospitals, they are largely empty. We have diagnostic suites empty. We have operating theatres empty. We have entire clinical teams still not treating patients. Does the Minister envisage that children such as Callum will be able to get these scans and treatments through the private hospitals? If so, when can Callum and his Mum, Gillian, expect to start seeing that kind of treatment?

See this speech in context