Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I compliment and congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Colm Burke on his appointment and wish him well. I would not be putting this issue down at all today if I had received replies from the HSE to the questions I asked weeks ago. It is disgraceful the way this House is being treated by Ministers, Departments and the HSE when we table parliamentary questions. I am a Member of the Parliament and I should get my replies in a reasonable time. I want to put that on the record of the House today.

The second issue I want to raise is the lack of progress on the Ballyhaunis primary care centre, PCC. This was to be completed in October 2020 but works are at a standstill since 2021. I understand the scaffolding is still on the site, which is a health and safety issue. Ballyhaunis urgently requires its primary care centre. To be fair, there were four promised at the time when James Reilly was Minister. Castlebar has one, as have Westport, Ballinrobe and Claremorris. The only one that is not completed is Ballyhaunis. It is a very diverse, multicultural town now and there are more non-residents in the town than there are Irish people. The time has come and I want to know from the Minister today what is happening, when it is going to be finished, what is happening with the builder and why the Government is not stepping in. It did it for the children's hospital in Dublin. Why are those in the west always second-class citizens? I will give another example. We had a girl in our town last week and a girl from Roscommon who both won European gold medals. RTÉ did not come to Westport but if it was bad news, RTÉ "bad news" would be down straight away with loads of cameras.

Coming back to this issue, it is very important to the people of Ballyhaunis. They have been waiting for their health centre for a long time. Alma Gallagher has been pushing this for the past year. She has been trying to get answers out of the HSE but just cannot get them. Today I want to know from the Minister what is happening. When are we going to see builders back on site? When are we going to see the primary care centre finished in Ballyhaunis? What is the delay? Why is the Government not stepping in? Why have I to be here today raising this when the Government has a put a contract in place and a builder is in place? If there are problems, why are these problems not dealt with? If the builder is not able to complete, why have we not taken the builder out of the site and put somebody else in? This is not fair to the people of Ballyhaunis. A lot of people are having to travel to the health centres in Castlebar, Westport or Claremorris when they should be going to their own health centre in Ballyhaunis. The Government is talking about multicultural Ireland and bringing people into towns but it will not put the facilities in to suit the people who need and want them.

I hope the Minister of State will have clear answers for me today. I will be surprised if I get clear answers from the HSE. They do not seem to want to answer anything. They seem to be gone out of control. It is time the Government brought the people who are running these operations back to heel. I want clear answers today for the people of Ballyhaunis and for Alma Gallagher, who has been raising this for the past year and cannot get replies out of the HSE.

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