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

This place is too big; I have been indicating for quite a while. Obviously, Brexit will cause an awful lot of upheaval and complications in many sectors of all our lives. I do not know whether it was good or bad fortune, although I enjoyed it thoroughly, to work with the excellent, hard-working Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union Affairs, comprising all parties and none, over a number of years while preparedness for Brexit was taking place. One issue that I have begged the Government to address relates to the urgent need for a bilateral agreement with Britain on the cross-border directive, whereby people seeking urgent medical healthcare will be able to travel North to receive the excellent care they get in private hospitals, and that our health service can pay for it. As recently as last weekend, I sent a busload of patients from County Kerry to Belfast, where they received excellent care in a manner in which they could afford to pay for it.

The big problem is that, right now, I have more people ready to go, before the danger zone of 31 December, but there is such pressure on the hospital at the moment that it does not think it will be able to cater for all the patients coming from the South. Between 5,000 and 6,000 used that service last year. It is for care. There is nothing more important in this world, in my book anyway, than our two eyes, because we have only two. If we lose one, we will be down to one eye, and if we lose that, we will be down to nothing. Sadly, I know people who have gone blind waiting to have cataracts removed in our country and that is wrong.

I am again pleading with the Government to please come to some sort of arrangement or bilateral agreement with the UK Government whereby we will still be able to avail of cross-border initiatives such that the funding can be supplied and that these patients can receive treatment, whether for their hips, knees or cataracts. Many of these people are elderly but many are not. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me the opportunity to discuss the issue.

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