David Norris (Independent)

The urgency of this matter is indicated by the fact that I understand there were plans to start moving staff from St. Luke's Hospital in November this year, at which time there would be reduced services for an increased number of patients. The feeling expressed on this side of the House - I know there is some sympathy on the other side of the House - is echoed by many, including patients and the Friends of St. Luke's. We have a distinguished group of persons representing the patients and the Friends of St. Luke's in the Visitors Gallery. I also recognise the presence of a very distinguished member of the artistic and intellectual community who lives in what has been described as the leafy suburb of Rathgar just across the road from St. Luke's Hospital, the poet and biographer, Mr. Ulick O'Connor, the biographer of a great doctor and wit, Oliver St. John Gogarty. He has authorised me to say on his behalf that he strongly supports the retention of St. Luke's Hospital and the proposed amendments and that were he, as Oliver St. John Gogarty was, a Member of this House, he would be voting with us.

I would like to follow the example of Senator Fitzgerald because nothing makes the case more clearly than the direct personal experience of patients. I beg the indulgence of the House to read a few paragraphs from a remarkable letter I received from a patient who pays tribute to the services, in much the same way as I pay tribute also to the services provided by ARC, in Eccles Street, which provides care facilities and residential accommodation for families and people from the country who need to come to Dublin to avail of cancer treatment services. I spoke at the opening of that remarkable facility. This is a letter from somebody who is also with us in the Visitors Gallery. He says:

If you are wondering what my involvement with this wonderful hospital is, my father spent his last weeks there. And it was to my great amazement and relief that he and us his family were treated with such care and dignity, and that there was space for us to stay with him, so he was never alone in his last days. I and my family are the lucky ones. I have heard many tragic stories of people who were not lucky enough to end up in St Luke's. One of the hospitals Minister Harney's experts have designated as one of the Centres of Excellence is Beaumont Hospital. I brought my father there many times. He hated it there. He was traumatised by the crowds and the noise there.

Most interestingly, generously and appropriately she goes on to say:

I would point out that the staff were hard-working and wonderful there, apart from the young woman from accounts who handed my (fully VHI-paid up) father a bill for his treatment - this happened the first morning he sat outside his bed in the high-dependency ward after an arduous invasive operation. The anxiety he experienced because of that young woman cost his health dear. Beaumont also forgot to carry out a follow up scan on my father, which meant when his cancer was found to have returned, it was by then impossible for the surgeon to fully remove the tumour. I cite all these incidents, not because I want to knock Beaumont, or the Cancer Control Strategy, but merely to point out that no hospital is perfect - certainly none in Ireland right now, but I will say that St Luke's, while only able to provide certain kinds of cancer care, is streets ahead of both Beaumont and the Mater in terms of patient comfort as far as my father experienced it.

Some of the other points made in the letter I have already placed before the House and I do not intend to speak again. I hope the Minister of State, after these final interventions from all of us on this side and with what I know is the goodwill if not the vote of Senator Geraldine Feeney, whom I greatly respect, will find it possible to accept these amendments.