Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to raise this important issue. Day care services at the Abbeyleix community nursing unit, which were attended more than 100 people, have been closed. The hospital has ceased services to allow for its refurbishment and day care services were being housed in a part of the hospital that was being used for storage, but I am told it is not going to reopen. This has left a huge area of east and south County Laois without services, in areas such as Timahoe, Swan, Ballinakill, Durrow, Rathdowney, Borris-in-Ossory and, of course, Abbeyleix itself, as well as all the areas surrounding that. Abbeyleix hospital offered an excellent service. It also provided services for inpatients in the nursing unit, such as chiropody and physiotherapy, along with social activities, which are very important.

It is puzzling that Portlaoise day care centre is closed for refurbishment at the same time, and I do not see activity around it, or at least there was not up to one week ago. The doors just closed. I am not arguing against refurbishment or any investment in facilities such as this but we need to find out why HSE management takes these decisions. Mountmellick day care centre, too, is closed for refurbishment and extension, meaning the entire county has been left without day care services. Laois has no day care services and that is not acceptable. What kind of decision-making is this? Of course, we need to upgrade and invest in facilities and that is all overdue, but we should not close the whole lot to do that.

The importance of day care centres to the elderly cannot be stressed enough. I acknowledge Deputy Butler, as Minister of State with responsibility for older people issues, has a particular interest in this area and she is focused on the issue. They are vital for people, not least those who live alone in rural areas. We should try to support the elderly. There has been something of a change in thinking about this. Throughout the 2000s and the recession that ensued, people were inclined to say nursing homes were the first option. In fact, the first option should be to try to sustain people in their own homes. That is more cost effective, it is what they want and it will be far more satisfactory if we can do that. Those one or two days a week in the day care centre are vital, as families and elderly people tell both me and the Minister of State all the time.

Elderly people may feel they do not have a voice, so I convey to the Minister of State the feelings that have been expressed to me by many families and elderly people throughout the county. We have been left with no day care services. We are now out of Covid, and the Minister of State can imagine how important that one outing a week was, so we should try to provide for it. It is a part of the service, along with home care in some cases, that is needed to keep people in their own homes. Abbeyleix hospital needs to reopen, as do the centres in Portlaoise and Mountmellick, although I ask the Minister of State to focus on the one in Abbeyleix in her response.

See this speech in context