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

I too wish the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, all the best in his new job. I look forward to working with him and we will certainly have a lot of things to sort out.

I thank the health workers all around the country, but especially in Kerry, the people who worked in the hospitals in Tralee, Cahersiveen, Dingle, Kenmare, Killarney, and indeed, Bantry, which is very close to us and deals with many patients in our general district.

I ask the Minister, as I have asked several times before, to deal with the need for expanding or reopening the beds in Kenmare and Dingle and the new promised hospital for Killarney. I want to highlight problems in the emergency department in University Hospital Kerry, Tralee, where people over 80 and 90 years of age are waiting up to 24 hours or more. There seems to be a problem with doctors in the emergency department, in that there is not enough of them or of radiologists to read X-rays and scans. People are being sent home without this happening and that is not good enough.

I want to raise the issue of home help. People would like to stay much longer in their homes if they had a bit of extra home help, for which I am calling.

We know about the sanitary requirements and such being followed up by HIQA. Who is monitoring the protein and nutritional value of what patients are getting in hospitals, care homes, and places where elderly people are being fed to ensure they are receiving the proper nutrition, especially where outside caterers are employed to bring in the food? We need to ensure they are getting the right type of food with the proper nutrition and protein in it.

We are all here today to support the extra funding that has been allocated. We wish that it was more, because so much more is needed. I would like to ask the Minister and the Government what investigations have been done internationally into who caused this virus. It is said it was the Chinese. I ask that we follow up on that, even though people are dead and families have suffered severe pain. I think of the Cagney family in the Black Valley beyond Kenmare who have suffered so much. No money will ever compensate them, but if the Chinese are responsible for this virus, I ask the Minister and the Government to follow up on that and to ensure the people of Ireland get some compensation for what has happened here. We all know what it is costing. We do not have mines, gold, diamonds or oil. The ordinary working person will have to pay the price. If there is to be retribution, we should go after it, because what has happened to our country is not fair. Our lives and the lives of everyone we represent have been destroyed and upset.

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