Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies Mattie McGrath and O'Donoghue. I have a number of questions and, given that time is short, I might ask them all together. I begin with the issue of nursing homes and congregated settings. I note, thankfully, that in west Cork to date, and please God it will remain the case, there has been no Covid-19 case in any of the nursing homes. Nevertheless, there is no point skirting around the issue of the community hospital in Clonakilty, where, sadly, many people passed away. I am a member of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response, as was the Minister initially, and I have been trying to ascertain why the then Minister for Health signed a statutory instrument in 2016 pushing out the deadline for being compliant with HIQA standards of 80% single-bed occupancy in community hospitals. The deadline is now 2021, a delay that must have led to a loss of life in hospitals such as that in Clonakilty and other community hospitals. We often talk about nursing homes and the same may be true of them.

Is the Minister going to do the very same, that is, sign a statutory instrument and push out the deadline further? I would like him to tell me, although I accept he may not be able to do so because I am asking the question on the floor, when Clonakilty Community Hospital will be fully compliant. Works were to commence there but will they do so or will there be a hold-up? We need to know that for the sake of the people who work there and who worked through an horrific difficulty in that hospital. I know they did so tremendously well because I have spoken to patients and their families who told me the staff are very good. Unfortunately, I have noticed in community hospitals a complete lack of beds for elderly patients who need beds. They have been refused them in my constituency of Cork South-West, where there are fabulous community hospitals right out to Schull, Castletownbere, Dunmanway, Skibbereen, Kinsale and Bandon, but there is a need for additional beds. People are waiting in Cork University Hospital and cannot get a bed in a community hospital.

There is also the issue of Bantry General Hospital, something I have raised quite often. It is not mentioned in the programme for Government and I have serious concerns about it. The HSE is doing its best to close the back door on hiring a full-time anaesthetist. Bantry General Hospital is our hospital to protect us from Covid, and I would like to know where it stands in regard to securing an anaesthetist.

Why can there not be community testing for people who need a test, whether because they are flying out of the country or whatever? Where should we send them? Deputies who are contacted about the matter regularly have nowhere to send them. There is a provision if the person is ill, and there is a procedure in that regard through a person's doctor, but not through a person's own channel, which needs to be explored because people are seeking Covid tests before they enter other countries. As for the issue of same-day testing at the airports, I have raised for that two months with the Tánaiste. It is a no-brainer and it should have been worked on. It is a failure.

Local hubs have been mentioned in the context of CoAction and there was a promise that they could be opened. Why is funding not being made available and why has there been a hold-up in that regard, given that it was initially meant to be the case?

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