Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach. We are discussing children up to the age of 13 having access to GP and surgical services free of charge. I welcome this. I am sure it is greatly needed, but are we ready for it? I will share a number of conversations with the House.

I have a lady in my constituency who has two children who have a complex need and have received cancellations for blood tests in the hospital with no explanations given. The children are on strong medication that requires regular blood tests, and they have not been tested since January.

In another case, children who need immediate physiotherapy have been told that the senior physiotherapist, who I am reliably told is the best in Ireland, is working in the Covid-19 swabbing centre in Limerick since March. We have at our fingertips many competent and qualified people who could do this swabbing testing, yet children who need physiotherapy are suffering and one of the best physiotherapists in Ireland is tied up doing swab testing. Who oversees the staff allocations in the centres?

I have also been told that some physiotherapists were so concerned about their patients, particularly children, that they got in contact with them by Zoom with parental control. The HSE then told them to cancel the Zoom calls because they were in breach of the GDPR. These are children in desperate situations and, with parental control, the physiotherapists wanted to help, but common sense did not prevail here and they were told that they had to cease making the Zoom calls.

Children’s surgeries are way behind. Taking the example of where there were once six operations a day, there are now only three. I understand the restrictions around Covid-19 but this is not the reason. It is, it seems, because there are no operating theatres open.

A parent was looking for a senior management nurse in a well-known hospital. When she was found, she said that she was trying to find an office in the hospital for the consultant to meet the parents. Where is the management? What is going on? Does anyone care about the children and their needs? Another constituent's child is awaiting surgery and it was left for so long that it became a serious operation. This could have been dealt with at an earlier stage and it would have stopped this serious operation from happening.

We have qualified staff in our hospitals and front-line workers around the country who are being put into Covid centres to do testing. We also have a list of competent people in the medical profession who came back from abroad looking for work and are being told that no work is available. We could simply remove the people from Covid screening who are needed badly by these children and hire the competent people to do the Covid testing in the interim. This is common sense. Children and parents are suffering because we are not using a common sense approach. I ask the Minister to intervene and help these children and people. I welcome Deputy Donnelly as a Minister because I know he is a good, hard-working person and I believe he will listen to everybody who needs help. These people need his help. I also ask him to look at the management of some hospitals. Many hospitals are run well but in a minority there is a problem in management. I need the Minister's help to sort this out.

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