Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion, which is very important. In a rural constituency such as Galway East, which I represent, we can see the lack of services. The first issue is with GPs. Even in the towns they are under awful pressure. I was in a GP practice on Tuesday morning. One of the doctors was not there and there was great pressure on the rest of the staff because he was out sick. There is no fallback position. What is wrong is that we do not have enough GPs. We all know what the problem is but how are we going to resolve it? We have to make sure the working environment for our GPs is such that it is an attractive proposition.

The sooner we get to a stage where we are building our own capacity in our education system and attracting some of our emigrants back home without creating barriers for them, the better. If they are coming back, they should not have to work here for two years before they can get a mortgage and silly things like this. A bit of joined-up thinking must be done in all Departments to make sure that when somebody comes back to this country, they are not just told to come on back and it is great. They should be able to get a mortgage and get car insurance without being ripped off. They should be able to do all of the things they enjoy now in another country. These are only small things but they are the things that would make a difference.

The work done by public health nurses is incredible. It is important that we support it. It can be a lonely existence for a public health nurse going out visiting people. They should know and be reassured there is backup. We have plenty of colleges that are now training nurses. There is St. Angela's College in Sligo. It is also being done in Castlebar, Galway, Athlone and Letterkenny.

We have all of that, but we do not seem able to attract the requisite number of students and, importantly, retain them once they are qualified. We have to consider this matter as part of the question of the ill.

Issues to do with older people are the Minister of State’s delegated responsibility. In October, she opened the community nursing unit in Tuam. Not one patient has gone into it yet. HIQA has not provided it full certification and I understand that the certification for the old building runs out at the end of this month. There was fanfare, everyone was present and we had a great day, but there are still no patients in the unit today. This kind of situation should not be happening. I will give another example. At our newly built primary care centre in Tuam, the X-ray facility that was omitted from its design but for which funding was granted by the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, in 2017 has still not been installed. It is being worked on but will probably not be in place until next year, which will be seven years later. It was just a case of converting a room into an X-ray facility by installing lead-lined walls. The work will probably take two months. Had the facility been included when the centre was being built and when I requested it, it would have been finished within the timeframe of the contract and for a great deal less money. I do not know why it has taken seven years. These are the issues I am seeing on the ground.

Thankfully, we found a solution for the Seven Springs day centre in Loughrea, but we spent the past two years doing so. I made the Minister of State aware of how there were older people who were not getting a service. That the service had been transferred from a purpose-built unit to a local hotel was a crying shame. It is important to point out that it was local people – the concerned citizens of Loughrea – who got the service back. No one else should take credit for it.

Silly things like this are affecting older people. Services are being distributed because people are making decisions without thinking about the person who will be using them. As politicians, we need to step above that and ensure that our older people get the respect and services they deserve.

The day the Minister of State was in Tuam, we opened the office that the children’s disability network team would be moving into. A great deal of money was invested in the building, but we do not have the staff to run the services. The situation is so bad that, just before Christmas last December, the parents took to the streets and protested outside the building because there were so many people who could not access services. It was when they were called to a family forum meeting that they realised it was not just them talking about the issue, but everyone else as well. Children were not getting services, although not because of the staff who were in place. It was because there were not enough staff, including therapists. The HSE publishes different reports. One report says there are so many whole-time equivalents funded, another says something different. You wonder whether people know what they are doing.

We need a root-and-branch review of what is happening in these services. The last thing people want to hear, especially where children’s disability services are concerned, is talk of reconfiguration of services. All that is is another excuse to postpone doing anything for 24 months. The suggestion is that something has to be reconfigured and, until we get that right, we will not be able to do anything. That kind of excuse is worn out.

Something that galls me about the Joe and Helen O’Toole community nursing unit situation is that a local trust invested €7 million in it. That beautiful building is still not occupied. This issue needs to be thrashed out as soon as possible.

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