Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Like my colleagues, I welcome this Bill from the point of view of its dealing with a particular problem we have with people who work in the health and social care sector and have certain British qualifications that should be recognised. However, as Deputy Browne said, we have issues with a large number of health workers from nurses and doctors through to people who work as physiotherapists, speech and language therapists in acute hospitals and emergency departments and right though to disability services. As was said earlier, the workforce planning might not have been done. We do not have the places there. We have huge gaps that are creating a great impact on families out there. This also affects us as Members as we must deal with people who sometimes find themselves in difficult circumstances. We have no choice but to deal with this situation because we cannot leave it to continue as is. We are foisting far too much difficulty and pain onto people. The Minister of State will be aware from the disability sector of the necessity for constant, consistent interventions that must happen as early as possible. There are particular issues with the children's disability network teams and so on. Significant work must be done to put in place a system that can deliver for our people.

I join other speakers in mentioning that we have a major issue with home care provision. While accepting that funding has been in place for a long time, we just do not have the people in place to provide the care that people need. All of us in this Chamber are well aware of families who have come to us just to seek enough help to allow their loved ones to stay in their home which is something we should all be facilitating.

I have had many discussions with the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, about the task force. I had understood that draft proposals were to go to Cabinet and should have been dealt with in the budget. Does the Minister of State think that this will provide us with some of the proposals? I know there were many things, including tax breaks, to facilitate certain people to work in the health sector and, in particular, to make themselves available for weekend work. We all know there were issues regarding expenses. There were multiple issues. There were issues with visas for people coming from abroad.

I agree with Deputy Martin Browne that we need to do absolutely everything we can to keep those who have been trained to the highest level in the State. We should support them as much as we can to keep them working in the system. We know we have major issues with the number of doctors, etc. We have the ongoing issue of Navan hospital and the concern over closing an accident and emergency department which would put pressure on hospitals such as Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, which is already under serious pressure. It has led to many people with a medical background stating that this is just not a solution at this point in time.

We need to do the due diligence on all the positions we need filled in our health service. We then need to ensure we have the throughput to get people working in those settings. As much as we welcome this legislation, it is but a small step on a much longer journey. If we start to deal with individual gaps in the system, there are multiple gaps in the system we could all mention.

I ask the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, to update me on diabetic services, particularly in Louth County Hospital. There are issues with the required education programmes and ensuring that we have the facility to provide people with insulin pumps, etc., to allow them to live their lives fully and play their part. There are too many gaps at this time.

There is a wider issue which I have raised previously. It was raised with me by a locum working in pharmacies throughout the Louth area. I think it was in Drogheda where a lady who was on the drug payment scheme was late picking up something for a very serious illness she had. She had been taking her medication every second day to save money. She had previously been on a medical card but it had been refused. This locum made the point that he had seen a number of people who had lost their medical cards. In some cases, they had not realised they had lost their medical cards until they had gone into pharmacies. This lady did not have the €80 she needed to pay for her medication. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis we need to address this very specific problem. I understand the locum paid the cost himself because he felt he had not gone into the job to refuse to provide someone with medication.

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