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

I thank Deputy Tully for tabling this very important motion. Since I was elected in 2016, I believe that one cohort of people has been totally and utterly neglected; namely, elderly parents who are now in their 70s and 80s. They would be doing good enough to look after themselves without needing home helps and carers to do so, but they are also trying to mind older children who cannot mind themselves. These are strong boys and girls whose parents are not physically able to manage them anymore because they have to be lifted and may have to be restrained, etc. They are burdened with this and the biggest worry they have, when they go to their grave, is who will look after their son or daughter who is not well or has never been well since birth. These parents have gone through so much that you would think that when they reach 70 years of age the State and the HSE, which gets so much money to provide help to everyone, would look after them.

St. Mary of the Angels is a wonderful facility for these kinds of people. This place is being closed by stealth because it is deemed to be a congregated setting that the health service wants to close down. I will say to the Minister that there is a place for facilities like St. Mary of the Angels, where there are all types of services, including a swimming pool, that can manage a number of people. Some 70 or 80 people were looked after there for years. Now, when someone dies, that bed is closed down. That is wrong because this place was donated to the health service by the Doyle family. It includes a significant amount of land where all kinds could be built on it, instead of trying to close it. I will give one example. One elderly resident in St. Mary of the Angels, who is not able to look after herself, has a mother who is alone. That resident is now being told that she will have to leave and go to one of the most northern counties in the Twenty-six Counties, not 10 miles away from the Border.

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