Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As I mentioned earlier in the Chamber, plans have been announced to repurpose the new community care nursing unit in Nenagh. The decision to change it from a public facility to a privately run stepdown facility, in order to take pressure off UHL, is a prime example of robbing Peter to pay Paul and moving the deckchairs around. Again, it is the elderly in the area who will suffer. It appears the Minister believes it is appropriate to deal with a shortage of beds in the mid-west by transferring that shortage elsewhere in the same region. It will be at a cost to the elderly. It is an unacceptable way of running any health service, as anybody with any bit of common sense would agree.

More than 20 people currently reside in the existing St. Conlon's facility, which has been declared not fit for purpose by HIQA. People have very little space in their rooms. I will give an example. As things stand at St. Conlon's, if someone has to use a hoist furniture has to be moved out of the way. Visitors have to sit on the bed. That is how small the units are at the minute. The floors are rising which is unacceptable in a facility that houses elderly people. My God, surely that should not be happening in 2024.

HIQA previously reported the need for a new nursing home and that is what St. Conlon's was getting. News of the new nursing home was received with great joy by the families and residents because they had been waiting for more than a decade for this. Since its inception and throughout the build, those residing or working there alongside the unions engaged with the HSE, to a certain extent. Some 20 residents are ready to move in. A further 40 people are on the waiting list for the new St. Conlon's facility. They are waiting to get in there at some stage. Their hope and optimism for the future has been snatched from under their noses by the announcement I mentioned at the outset. It has been done with no meaningful engagement.

The HSE and the Department are trying to give the impression that there has been widespread engagement with the unions, the residents and the workers, but that has not happened. Nothing could be further from the truth. This misconception has outraged the residents and the unions. The public is not happy either because of the way this is being pushed on them. The Taoiseach said in the House that there should be engagement at local level between the HSE, families, staff, residents and local representatives. We have had no engagement with anybody from the Department on this. I spoke to a union representative who told me that the HSE engaged with him at the start but after that, it cancelled meetings on numerous occasions and all of that engagement stopped. There has been no engagement worth talking about. It is another example of the elderly being expected to shoulder the burden of a health system that appears to put them last while it struggles with the consequences of the reconfiguration in the mid-west.

Where will the people who would be accommodated in this 50-bed unit go? This is a disastrous decision. It just shifts the problem from UHL to elderly people who happen to live in the mid-west. The existing St. Conlon's facility takes pressure off UHL, as would the new unit. This decision only shifts the deckchairs. There is justifiable fear that if the keys are handed over to a privately run company, as has been suggested, those keys will never come back. We have seen that in numerous places such as Carrick-on-Suir and the Dean Maxwell community nursing unit, both of which are in my own county of Tipperary. This is a replica of that as far as I am concerned. That is why a rally is being held in Nenagh this weekend. There will be a massive crowd at it. Can the Minister of State with responsibility for older people stand over the decision that has been made here?

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