Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter. Ideally, it would be helpful if a Minister from the Department of Health were present, but there is a certain urgency about this case. I would appreciate it if the Minister of State could feed what I am about to say to his colleagues in that Department.

I am concerned about the lack of a dietician in CHO 7 and what this means for people who require the services offered by such an individual. Modern medicine relies on multidisciplinary teams, medical nurses and other professionals to provide the best possible patient care. When we fail to recruit and allow gaps to appear in various specialties, the model does not work and the disciplines are just not there.

A constituent approached me recently. She is the mother of a baby boy who needs to see a dietician. Her child, who is called Frankie, started to show a severe allergy to his food. He is aged about a year and a half. His reaction was so acute that the mother brought him to the doctor immediately. She was advised her to keep a food diary and the child was referred to the community dietician for urgent intervention. However, there is no community dietician. The mother naturally expected to be told how long the waiting list was for CHO 7 and hoped that a baby would be prioritised, given how serious this can be and how the situation can deteriorate so quickly for children so young. She was told in May that there was no waiting list because there was no dietician for the entire CHO 7 area, which takes in Kildare, west Wicklow, Dublin west, Dublin south city and Dublin south west. For all those hundreds of thousands of people, there is not one dietician. The child cannot see a consultant in Tallaght University Hospital until the allergy is proven, but an allergy skin-prick test cannot be performed unless a consultant or dietician requests it. This is a catch-22 situation. The only way out of this limbo is to have the test done privately. Since the private system is being forced to cover the gaps in the public system, the family is being forced to wait. It costs about €180 for the test. Not every family has that. All the while, the GP advises that the child might face development issues with his digestive system as a result of the untreated allergy. To have any hope of getting the diagnosis and treatment for her child the mother was going to be forced to go private. What sort of message does that send to new parents with all the stress and worry they already have? All those people in CHO 7 cannot receive nutritional assessments or tailored care plans to meet nutritional requirements or correct a poor nutritional status.

Dieticians are vital in the context of improving the lives of people suffering not only from gastrointestinal disorders but also diabetes, cancer, kidney failure and a host of other conditions. As a specialism in the health service, it is not an optional extra. We talk about preventative healthcare but we are failing to cover even the most basic provision in so many areas. What options do parents and families like this in the public system? What way can the find their way out of the limbo where they need tests to see specialists that only specialists can provide? The matter is compounded by the lack of community nursing in the system. The community nurse would normally monitor the development of the child, both in this case and generally in the community, but because of the shortage in the system at the moment, that is not happening. There is a bit of a crisis in the area. I do not know if the Minister of State has something positive to tell this family. It is a cry for help from this family and I am sure there are many others who are in the same boat and looking for some sort of support on this.

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