Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion tabled by the Independent Group. We hear a lot from the Government about care in the community being a way to take pressure off acute hospitals and emergency departments. I have no issue with this. There are communities, some of them in Tipperary, that shudder to hear the excuse of providing care in the community when centres that do precisely this are targeted for closure. We had this argument about the Dean Maxwell community nursing unit in Roscrea. We heard it when St. Brigid's District Hospital, Carrick-on-Suir, was closed by stealth. St. Brigid's was closed after initially being repurposed temporarily as a step-down facility for Covid patients. However once it was vacated, we were told the HSE had suddenly deemed it unfit for the purpose for which it had been used for decades and it was never reopened.

In discussing its plans for these units last year, the HSE and the Department of Health told me their focus was shifting to care in the community, which would replace the need for the beds. This is a false argument. First, people have to travel further from their communities and second, while the HSE planned to provide 33,522 home support hours in south Tipperary that year, only 24,238 hours were actually provided. A similar situation was recorded in north Tipperary. Three years after the residents were transferred from St. Patrick's Hospital, Cashel, to Our Lady's, in anticipation of the development of the community nursing unit on the St. Patrick's site, we have been told there was another change of mind and that the St. Patrick's site is not suitable. As with St. Brigid's, no details or reports to support the assertion that the site was not suitable were made available. When we queried it, we were accused of fearmongering.

Let me say we are concerned that yet again a decision has been made that would affect the level of service in a centre. We are concerned about the lack of detail being provided to us and that we will be sold another pup. We are concerned that a member of the regional health forum south and all but one Tipperary Oireachtas Member were excluded from a meeting on the matter that took place last week. This was despite my unanswered request that the Minister meet all Tipperary Oireachtas Members and relevant councillors. As far as anyone outside this cosy arrangement can see, nothing new was divulged at the meeting apart from the message that we are all expected to take the Minister's word on St. Patrick's at face value. The Government accuses people who are genuinely concerned about the future of St. Patrick's and the plans for it of playing political football with the matter but it is the Minister of State and her Government colleagues who are doing precisely this through their actions.

We need investment in the health service, which the Government has made a shambles of. If the Government wants to be taken seriously, we also need honesty and openness on its intentions for communities which, sadly, I must say is lacking from the Government benches at present.

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