Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will refer briefly to a number of issues but I will start by thanking the Chairman, the secretariat and all of the staff who oversaw the implementation of the special committee and brought us together in a very challenging time. In the early days, it must have been very tough for them to figure out the logistics of how we would meet but they did it and facilitated what I believe to be a very important committee.

I will highlight a number of issues and focus on areas of particular difficulty as we move into the next phase, one of which is the restarting of non-Covid care. We can all agree that Covid-19 exposed many of the challenges and deficiencies in the health system. I will touch on three issues - direct provision, waiting lists and, briefly, the issue of image-based abuse. Potentially hundreds of women and girls have been impacted by the leaking and sharing of images of them online without their consent. We know that will have a serious impact on their mental health. We see references in the report to the impact of the suspension of ongoing support services. We know that Women's Aid has a help line, 1800 314900, which is extremely important and operates 24 hours a day, but those women will need ongoing support. I want to put that issue on the Minister's agenda so that a facility can be put in place to ensure the mental health supports that are needed can be provided both while the Garda investigation is ongoing and in its aftermath.

I want to focus on the restarting of non-Covid care. The waiting lists the Minister and I discussed on many occasions in this House did not go away. If anything, we know they got much worse but I was shocked by how bad things had got when I was sent a letter from one of my constituents. It is a referral letter from the HSE for a child, which states that it received the referral for the above-mentioned child to its early intervention team. It further states that this was discussed by its referral committee and that it is accepting the child for an intake assessment but that, at present, there is a 44-month wait. This is a young child in Donabate who needs an urgent intervention. He has been assessed as needing early intervention. It is a bit of a joke to call it early intervention if the child has to wait 44 months for it. These are the challenges that will have to be faced. The family fully understand the impact Covid-19 has had on the health service and waiting lists but I want to be able to tell them there is a plan in place and the 44-month waiting time referred to in the letter can be significantly improved upon. We cannot continue to call it early intervention while children are left waiting for 44 months. All of that time is lost when this child needs support to be able to engage in school and in the community when we get back to some sort of normality. What will normality look like to a child who has to wait 44 months before early intervention takes place? As I said, we should stop calling it early intervention.

One of the other issues we raised as a committee was direct provision. I raise an issue that made my blood run cold when I heard it. Yesterday, in Balseskin reception centre, a man asked for mental health support. He was put out. He slept outside last night. Today, thanks to one of the people from the fantastic group known as Fingal Communities Against Racism, an ambulance was called at 2.30 p.m. The ambulance did not arrive until 6 p.m. This man is severely distressed. One of the issues we discussed as a committee was the particular challenges faced by people in direct provision. We all agreed that it was awful and that changes had to be made. We all shook our heads. Collectively, we decided that this was not good enough and for a very brief period, people actually thought about the lived experience and the reality of what it is like for people living in direct provision. I thought I knew a little bit about it but this has shocked me.

I hope we can learn the lessons contained in the report. I fear we will not but I genuinely hope we do and that we can take what we have learned and use it to build something better post-Covid.

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