Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If they do not have a family to do it, what are they going to do? Should they sit in the cold? That is what the Minister of State is telling people; to sit in the cold if they cannot light a fire because nobody going to do it for them. It is absolutely ridiculous. That is the reality for people I know. A man in his nineties was told that if he could not light the fire, that was too bad. The person who is going to help him get out of bed and get dressed in the morning cannot take an extra five minutes to come in and light the fire for him. That is not allowed. That is a ridiculous service and the Minister of State needs to recognise that.

I also want to raise disability services, which are in dire need throughout the country.

There are difficulties with CAMHS and difficulties with intellectual disability services. I dealt with a young person who was going through CAMHS until it was decided that was not the right service and there should be a transfer to the intellectual disability team. There is no intellectual disability team in the area but that is where the family was told to go. I understand there are only four intellectual disability teams in all the CHO areas in the country. When the family asked whether the child could be transferred to a team in one of the other areas, the answer was that this was not allowed. The answer to this ten-year-old, who recovered from cancer when still a baby, was, "Sorry, you cannot get a service." "Sorry" is not good enough. We have the head of the HSE telling us the resources are not in place because it does not have the money to provide them. There must be a recognition that the notion we have a functioning health service is simply not correct. It reminds me of when Maggie Thatcher was asked about bus services many years ago, to which she replied that successful people do not use buses.

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