Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have acknowledged the person in the Taoiseach's office who has been in constant contact. I am not having a go at anybody here. I am having a go at the fact it has been meeting after meeting since then. There will be another meeting next Thursday. There has been plenty of talk, but there is only one thing the HSE has said, which is that it has no resolution. Imagine that. Those are the facts. The HSE has said it has no resolution. We are going to go into a meeting again on Thursday. We will be sitting around a table for another hour, and we will hear the same thing and it will go on again. That is not the way you treat people with severe autism. That is not the way you treat families in Ireland.

On the other side, I talked about an elderly person. I am bringing it from one side to the Taoiseach. Seán has just turned 18 years old. We were promised for two years that if we weathered this storm, and by God his father did, Seán would have a place the day he was 18. On the other side I have a neighbour who has needed fluid drained from her brain five times. That family are not millionaires. They are ordinary working people who rented an apartment in Dublin a few times to have accommodation while their mother was in hospital. That procedure has been cancelled every time. Why? They are told there are no beds. With Seán, they did not have a house and then they had a house, they did not have the staff and then they were recruiting staff. The Taoiseach mentioned staff himself. I have been hearing about staff for the past 18 months. In private business, if I go in as a subbie with tractors and dump trailers, I cannot say "Sorry lads, I've no staff". You would be kicked out the door. That is the way it works. That is the ruthlessness of the private sector and how it works, and that is why it delivers. In the public sector at the moment, however, there is no accountability, whether it is the HSE or the charity sector and whether we like it or not.

They are not listening to politicians either, which is a damnable and sad thing to see.

See this speech in context