Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I am standing up here for the people of Louth because my constituents, neighbours and families are being denied essential neuro-rehabilitation services that most other regions have or plan to have. Let us be very blunt about it: Louth has no community neuro-rehabilitation team, CNRT, - not one. That is not because the need is not there; it is because one has not been provided.

The HSE has confirmed to me directly that HSE Dublin and North East which includes Louth, is one of the only regions in the entire country with no operational CNRT and no funded team. That has been written n responses to my parliamentary questions, in black and white, and it has real and devastating consequences for the people of my county.

Let us humanise this because it is not just about a line in the national service plan. Louth has stroke survivors trying to relearn how to walk and speak with no specialist community rehab team to support them. People with acquired brain injuries are being discharged from hospitals straight into a vacuum. Families are caring for loved ones with progressive neurological conditions without any structural follow-up. Patients are travelling across counties or simply giving up because the service or the medical team recommended to them does not exist. We are not talking about a luxury service; we are talking about physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, psychology and medical rehab oversight. Those are the fundamentals of recovery and these are supports that determine whether persons regain independence or lose it permanently. Right now in Louth, that recovery depends entirely on a person's postcode, a system that is failing us. In reality, for every month Louth patients wait, they lose more function. For every year the team is delayed, more function becomes permanently lost. That cost is inaction, and that is what patients are dealing with.

Meanwhile, other areas, such as Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Dublin south, Wicklow and Kildare, have received funding for 12 whole-time equivalents and teams are progressing with recruitment. We have been left behind in the north east. The HSE has confirmed year after year that it has submitted estimate bids to fund the CNRTs for the regions with nothing, including mine, and those bids have not been delivered. When I ask through parliamentary questions whether existing neurological services in Louth will be expanded or integrated, the answer is that we have to wait for the national service plan for 2026. When I ask about monitoring this, the reply is "details to follow"; when I ask about staff and recruitment plans, it is "not yet available". There is no timeline, no commitment or no clarity. It is completely unfair to the patients in County Louth and the people of County Louth that they are continuously waiting for this. We cannot leave families continuously waiting while the rest of the country moves on. There is no equity in that system. We cannot pretend that a region of nearly half a million people does not need what the HSE itself describes as essential population-based rehabilitation services.

I ask the Minister for an update on that and I hope there will be urgency on it.

See this speech in context