Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am going to raise an issue with the Minister of State, Deputy Butler. She will have been requested to meet the community in Carndonagh, County Donegal, which has lost day services in the community hospital. It is unacceptable that, rather than upgrade the facilities, the hospital has been relocated, causing serious dismay. There was a packed public meeting in recent times. On a cross-party basis we ask the Minister of State to meet the community group and find a solution. Deputy David Cullinane, who drafted this motion, has rightly put all of the services together, be it GP, pharmacy or community primary services, as a solution to what we are seeing. The scale of this surpasses anything I have seen in all my time in politics. The Minister of State will know this. So many people cannot get a face-to-face appointment with their GP. They are struggling to get one. There are people who cannot register with a GP service in their local community. I can only speak with authority about north Donegal where our constituents are telling us they just cannot get an appointment. There is huge frustration. There is no doubt the capacity is not there. We need to lean on community services. We have a very strong pharmacy service in Donegal. We need to lean on that. That is why I am grateful to our health spokesperson, Deputy Cullinane, for putting this motion together. I have given the case of day services in Carndonagh but respite and community services are just not available in County Donegal. Every time we go to the HSE we hear the Department and lack of capital being blamed for this. We need a plan to back up our community services and resource community hospitals and pharmacies. We have these new primary care centres, which are lovely, but we are not seeing substantive delivery on the ground. People are still reporting a challenge in accessing care. I hope to see improvement on the back of this motion.

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