Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, is here but the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, should be here to answer this. He runs like a scalded cat every time we have a question or a motion down to talk to him. It is a total disrespect to the Rural Independent group. A scalded cat would not go through the skylight as fast as he has gone and he is like snow off a ditch on other occasions. The answer given by the Minister of State is condescending to older people. My colleagues here bus people to the North. Unfortunately we do not have the technology to enable buses to travel on water to go abroad and to tell people that they can go there. We have to tell people at the 11th and a half hour that the Government is looking at a bilateral agreement. It had two years to do this. The Government never accepted that the British were going to go. It should have in order to be ready. We are closing the stable door when the horse has well bolted. We want certainty and to know that people can go.

First, these people should be treated in Ireland and it is the Irish taxpayer who pays for this. It is a mockery that they have to go there but the opportunity was there and I want to thank Niamh and all of the staff in Kingsbridge Private Hospital for being so helpful and to thank Deputy Michael Collins and others who have organised this, together with the staff in Deputy Collins’s office who run around in the middle of the night picking up people to bring them to a bus in Cork. The Government has no idea the effort that goes into this. It is worth it because people can see, stand up and walk and live with some modicum of quality-of-life. This is not acceptable at this point in time. It should have been in the omnibus Bill.

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