Mary Moran (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for dealing with this Adjournment matter. The case I wish to refer to concerns an individual who had an accident several years ago and who had to have a battery pack inserted into her back to stimulate her nerve endings. She suffers from severe and chronic pain and her condition is consistently deteriorating. She has now reached the stage where she cannot get up the stairs. She is a single mother of two. She cannot climb the stairs and is a prisoner in her own home. I fully support her application for a housing transfer, as do her medical team. I believe it is imperative that something is done for her.

I have been making representations to the county council on her behalf for over seven months. The council has replied to the effect that it will look into the matter but that no funding is available. An occupational therapist has visited the woman and has agreed that she needs to go on the medical transfer list. The council has accepted this but has said that it does not have money or a suitable house to move her into. I have seen this lady's condition deteriorate rapidly over the last couple of months and she is now in hospital in Dublin. The battery pack is no longer working and she will undergo a six-to-seven hour surgical procedure to have it removed. When it is removed, she will not be able to move. She no longer has the power in her legs to move. When she goes back home, she will be even more debilitated. It is absolutely dreadful. She has two young sons - one in national school and the other half way through secondary school - who she relies on, along with other family members, to lift her to get to the bathroom. She spends an awful lot of her day lying on a couch. This is an urgent case.

This individual is suffering every single day because her current accommodation is wholly unsuited to her needs but there is a lack of suitable accommodation into which she can be transferred. She has said that she will go anywhere if she can have a home in which she can be as independent as possible. In a recent letter to Louth County Council a consultant wrote that she needs to be accommodated in a bungalow, that is, in single-storey accommodation, because she has "significant distress" from climbing stairs, mobilising or walking on anything other than the flat. He pointed out that she suffers severe, chronic pain on a daily basis and that without a change in her accommodation, she is likely to become more severely disabled. This is a recommendation from a consultant anaesthetist and pain specialist in a hospital in Dublin.

Not providing this individual with appropriate accommodation and not making her a priority case means that her physical condition will continue to deteriorate rapidly. Every week I receive phone calls from her during which she cries in pain. I feel so helpless and am at my wit's end telling her every week that I will phone the council again. I have phoned the council repeatedly and am sure that the staff are doing what they can but I cannot tell this lady to hold on any longer because I have been telling her that for the last eight months. This situation is taking a significant emotional toll on her family. Imagine being a prisoner in one's own home and dreading having to go near the stairs. This is an unhealthy situation, not only for the woman herself but for her two young children. These boys are under unnecessary strain.

Over the past seven months I have been witness to the unnecessary stress and hardship that has been caused to this lady and her family. I feel that I must raise this case at national level because I have exhausted all of the normal channels at a local level in seeking resolution to this matter. This person cannot wait any longer for a transfer and swift action is needed. I look forward to the Minister of State's response. I appreciate the work the Minister of State is doing in this area and welcome her recent announcements about bringing boarded-up houses back into use and so forth. In this particular case, it seems that there is no single-storey house available. There are many other cases of housing need I could bring to the attention of the Minister of State but this one is at crisis point. I would appreciate the advice of the Minister of State on the matter.