Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak today. The Covid pandemic has been a life-changing experience for us all. Who would have thought a couple of years ago of the impact Covid has had on each and every one of us? Thankfully, it seems we are now over the worst of this pandemic and society is starting to get back to normal, although we need to remain cautious. We need to look after our front-line staff. There is a lot of work being done at the moment. I think of the medical staff who fought this disease with great courage and skill. They are the real heroes and they continue to do this heroic work on a daily basis, often in very difficult circumstances. I also thank the staff of the many retail businesses that remained open during the pandemic, ensuring that we all had access to vital supplies. It is important that we recognise the great efforts made by everyone who made these great sacrifices for our health system.

Unfortunately, many of our loved ones were taken from us as a direct result of this pandemic. It is very important going forward that we remember those who lost their lives as a direct result of Covid. These people made the ultimate sacrifice and we must never forget that. As we start to get to other side of this pandemic, we must learn from it. There was no roadmap when this pandemic hit and a lot of people died. It is easy to look back with hindsight and be an expert. What is important now is that we learn from our mistakes.

I am very disappointed that despite all the additional funding that was made available to tackle this pandemic, it seems we are no better off when it comes to the number of ICU beds available in the health service. The reason for such severe lockdown measures at the height of the pandemic was to protect the health system and ensure that ICUs in particular were not overrun. I would have thought that a logical approach would be to increase the number of ICU beds to ensure we have a buffer. A great exercise to carry out in the near future would be to look at how all the additional funding that was put into the healthcare system was spent and to see what long-term benefits will be achieved from it. My fear is that we could be hit with another pandemic and unless we learn from this one, we could face even greater challenges.

The bottom line is that we must now learn to live with Covid. Locking down society is not the answer. It has been clearly demonstrated that the vaccination roll-out was the main reason we are now past the worst of the pandemic. For this reason, I urge everybody to please get vaccinated.

The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has left the Chamber but I wanted to raise with her the case of a 15-year-old girl in Dundalk who tried to commit suicide last week. This child was crying out for help. She contacted the helpline last week. Due to the cleverness of the operator, she realised there was something going on and contacted the Garda. Gardaí came to the young girl's house, saved her and took her to hospital. This is according to her mother. This is not the first time this child tried to commit suicide. The problem at the moment is that nobody seems to want to take responsibility. When the girl was brought to the hospital, the hospital told her she did not have a medical condition. CAMHS then got involved and got her to see a psychiatric consultant and social workers. She keeps telling them she wants to commit suicide but at the same time she wants to live. There is a lack of everything at the moment. The health service only seems to deal with mental health issues from Monday to Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. If people go looking for anything at the weekend, they are wasting their time. If they go to the Garda, they are told "What can we do?" Gardaí can go to someone's house and take the person to the hospital but then he or she is released. What are we going to do going forward? I do not know the answer. Parents ring me saying they have a problem so I ring the hospital, which says it is nothing to do with it. I ring CAMHS, Tusla and everybody else and they all say the same. I am like a dog chasing its tail and going around in circles.

I heard the Minister of State say earlier that she was spending millions doing this and that. There is no point in spending millions if it will not help somebody. A 15-year-old child came to me to look for help. I contacted the office of the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, three or four months ago, the last time the girl tried to commit suicide, and nothing was done. I have a name which I will pass to the Minister of State, and I ask her to help this child.

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