Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise an issue I have raised numerous times over the past two years and one I think my colleagues in Dublin Mid-West have also raised. It is the lack of public health nurses in Dublin Mid-West, which is the area I am from. This is particularly acute in Newcastle, Lucan and Clondalkin. As the Minister of State can imagine, public health nurses are vitally important for developmental checks on infants. It is vitally important that parents have the reassurance of those checks. However, for several years, that has not been evident with regard to mothers, infants and babies getting those checks. From when a child is born to when that child is four years old, there should generally be four checks, but that is not happening.

The last response I got from the HSE was that there is a recruitment situation. The last response to a parliamentary question I got was probably about two or three months ago and it stated that, thus far, it has not been successful. The recruitment ban on HSE front-line staff has obviously compounded this issue.

We have an unacceptable situation where mothers and parents do not have access to this vital service. As most people know, these services are extremely important to assessment of a child’s development. If you do not have them, things will be missed, and intervention is absolutely key.

I hope the Minister of State has better news than other Ministers had in previous engagements on this. Parents have been on to us. They are telling us that because of the area they are in, they do not have access to this particular service. If somebody lives in a different area of Dublin or a different part of Ireland, they have access to that, so why are they being denied that important access? I understand there are recruitment pressures. However, that does not justify people being denied these services for their children. I hope the Minister of State has good news for the parents who have been asking these important questions about a vital service.

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