Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies for coming and raising the different issues today. I congratulate Deputy Lawless on his election by the good people of Mayo. I was in Mayo yesterday. I pay particular tribute to Peter Healy, the facilities manager of Mayo University Hospital and Patricia Hough, the on-duty manager, who did extraordinary work along with all the staff at Mayo University Hospital to make sure that the staff were in in advance, in anticipation of the storm, ready for the next shift. They did extraordinary work in terms of facilities.

I also acknowledge some of the difficulties that we will need to fix for the future. Mayo University Hospital, by way of example, had a significant investment in its generators in 2023. That gave the staff there in recent days and particularly during that storm period real confidence that not just were its generators up to date, but they were well fuelled. It is of the most basic importance. However, as the Deputy said, the difficulty, of course, was that Uisce Éireann did not have the generators, leading to the threat of a water shortage to a hospital. While it did not happen, I am highlighting it as a risk that has to be fixed for the future. We need to acknowledge that this part went well and while something bad did not happen on the second part, it could have happened and we have to fix that for the future.

As the Deputy has just raised the issue of Mayo, I want to pay tribute to the staff there. On the night before the storm, the evening I was appointed as Minister for Health, I went directly from the Áras to Crumlin children's hospital where again the staff were preparing for the storm. Many staff were coming in and sleeping overnight in anticipation of being there for the shift at 7 a.m. They were getting takeaways, putting down mattresses and making sure everybody was there. I pay tribute to the 400 staff in Cork University Hospital and the 200 on site in the Mercy University Hospital. This was replicated across the country.

The overall health response and preparation were about ensuring three things in particular: the provision of services in acute hospitals in terms of staff and generators; making sure that those who live in HSE residential care facilities were protected and looked after; and, as many Deputies have highlighted, ensuring people in their homes continued to receive a range of different HSE supports, such as home help and support with medical devices in the home, which are so important. The focus was on making sure those people were looked after and protected.

There were successes and failures. The power went out in Limerick and Letterkenny, but the generators kicked in. Deputies may imagine that one of the first questions that I will be asking in terms of our resilience planning for the next event - we have to acknowledge that with climate change there will be a next event of some kind - is: what is the up-to-date situation with generators across the hospitals? We did not have a problem on this occasion, but let us check and double-check. The same applies with Uisce Éireann and our residential care facilities.

There were a number of pieces of important preparation. We needed to secure construction sites at hospitals and other facilities, for example in Limerick where we are building a very significant new facility, as the Deputy will know, and make sure they were okay. We had preparation for vaccines, for example, where there is a chain of cold storage that must be protected and respected. Work was done with GPs in advance of the storm, anticipating power outages, to secure as many of those vaccines as possible. Could we do it better next time? Yes, absolutely I think we can. Those are the sorts of questions that I will be drilling in as the new Minister for Health to make sure that we are building further resilience in the health system in anticipation of major events such as that.

I also pay tribute, by way of example, to the staff in the Sacred Heart centre in Castlebar in Deputy Lawless's constituency, who spent considerable time making sure that the fuel for generators was topped up throughout the community. I use these specific examples to describe the breadth of work done by hard-working individuals in our healthcare system, from consultants and nurses turning up the night before, to facility managers and on-call managers trying to secure accommodation, not just for hospital staff but also for people presenting to emergency departments not just now, but in anticipation of events or in anticipation of a concern. I recognise the extraordinary work they have done.

More than anybody else, there is a significant impact on a group of vulnerable people, as the Deputy correctly identified, who are in their homes and remain without power. There has been good work done by the HSE in going to those homes and identifying vulnerable people. That list changes by the way; a vulnerable person or an older person may be on a list as for a considerable period, or someone may have had an operation and is vulnerable for a shorter period. One of the things I will be checking is how that list is managed over time and how that correlates with the lists the Garda and the ESB have.

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