Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

A sun hat would be more appropriate for the Minister. We will have plenty of sun.

We need definite answers about St. Brigid's Hospital in Carrick-on-Suir. We are told that the staff were needed in Cashel. The Minister can correct me, but I understand more than 74,000 people applied to work in HSE front-line services - fair dues to them - and only a paltry 140 or so were employed so why do the staff of St. Brigid's have to go to Cashel? I am delighted to see Cashel open. The Minister visited it with me and others and he saw its pristine state. Some €22 million had been spent on it. Now it is reopened. We are delighted and we send good wishes to the patients who moved into St. Patrick's, the staff, their families and all the care workers. However, what will happen post Covid-19? Will it be kept open as a hospital? There should be no more lame excuses that it was not fit, that people could not go up the stairs and whatever else. That cannot be allowed.

I refer to BreastCheck, the cervical smear tests and all the other tests. People are waiting anxiously. We see the Minister's former leader advocating for the hospice, and fair dues to him. People with prostate cancer have been advised to check and have tests such as bowel smearing, but all that has stopped. People are getting worried and sick. The stress of it is making them sick. It is compounding the mental health issues, and they must be dealt with. Early intervention services have just been abandoned for the past three or four months. They were bad anyway, but they are vital to children and to adults with disabilities if they are new cases presenting. We had difficulty last year opening St. Rita's in Clonmel and we want to have an assurance it will open this summer.

July provision is going to start; it must. Let us picture a family who has a young man or woman at home with severe and profound disabilities. These people have been in contact with me. Thankfully, some of the soccer and GAA pitches are open this week and they can go there for a limited time. They need that. They were incarcerated for three months and did not even get to have a trip on the bus with their siblings. That routine was very important to them. Will the Minister respond on that?

I have also asked about mental health. The Minister mentioned mental health and us not getting our hair cut. Mine is not growing much anyway so I might have to get the 10:10:20 for it. I know barbers whose mental health is suffering. Their job is to get up for work, the banter, the service and the customer. Customers are being dealt with in the black market. It is simply appalling and the black market is expanding all the time. William Walsh in Clonmel has set up his salon. One goes into something like a telephone box and one is disinfected going in and leaving. There are gowns and everything else. He is a very professional man and he needs to get back to work. Work is his therapy and it is what he wants to do.

On the private hospitals, we had to sign up and I supported it, but the contract should have been changed this month. If it had cost money, so be it. Let them get back to work. I will not even talk about Citywest Hotel. It is an appalling vista to have that amount paid for an empty building and a field hospital. We thought we would need them. Thank God, we did not, so we must get them back to work and in use. The queues are getting longer. I plead with the Minister to do that. I also plead with him to insist with NPHET tomorrow to let barbers and such places open. That includes the pubs. Let them go back to 1 m because they cannot survive and they might not reopen.

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