Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I know he was here all day but he was not here to deal with this business. Why would he not answer me back and give me five minutes? I did not want a long meeting; I just wanted a huddle-type meeting. The last time the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation met the Minister he said he admired the quality and the excellence of its service and the way it served the whole country but that he was stuck between a rock and a hard place and that he could not find this money.

Let us just take a business approach to this issue. I have the HSE annual financial report and the list of the different agencies throughout the country and how the ¤3.5 billion is divided out. Senators Mulcahy and Conway said many interesting things about the different organisations. I think Senators Hayden and van Turnhout talked about the policy and the value for money report which came out in June. The only problem is that it was just a policy report; there was nothing in it about value for money. Laurence Crowley, who is a brilliant man, spent three years doing that report but I would say to Senators Conway and Mulcahy that the problem is value for money within the ¤3.5 billion.

I know for certain that the Minister is between a rock and a hard place but he must get HSE management to sit down and sort out the issue of value for money. We only want to extract ¤15 million out of the ¤3.5 billion. It is there. I listened to Senator Hayden and would have the same vision.

In a meeting with the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, and her senior HSE officials, I was accompanied by the nurse of a family who had taken a little child out of Crumlin hospital. The family was looking for a new buggy. Sandra apologised and said she did not want to raise individual cases but she said Crumlin hospital was looking for the buggy it lent this family in Wicklow last February. This was eight months later. The HSE could not get the ¤1,600 for a buggy. I looked into this recently and I will tell Senators about value for money. This buggy is for a special needs child and the buggy company could give me the buggy in three weeks but the HSE said it would be three months. We have to look at the value for money the HSE is giving.

At that meeting, the HSE said that it saw that the Minister of State, the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation and the hospice wanted to follow the patient. That is what we all agree on. The HSE management said it wanted to do that in the short to medium term, which I thought was fantastic. In my world, short to medium term means in the next month but the HSE manager said that to him short to medium term meant five to eight years. I do not have five to eight years because our children and our families do not have five to eight years.

I do not know what to do this evening. I should push this to a vote but I really trust the Minister of State and feel her heart is in the right place. However, we will have to break budgetary processes because the money is available, as Senators know. I need a promise to go in, fight for these families and take the money out. It is only taking ¤250,000 from one area, pushing it around and reallocating it.