John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I seek a debate on the centralisation of services brought about by the previous Government. This is something we need to revisit as centralisation has proven to be a disaster over recent years. What was wrong with the operation of the medical card system under the health boards? There was nothing wrong with it and it worked very well. It is now a disaster. I know a mature student in Dublin with absolutely no income and he has been fighting for 15 months with the primary care reimbursement service to get a medical card to which he is entitled. He had to send the service a solicitor's letter recently.

We can consider SUSI, the education grant system. There was nothing wrong with the way it was operating when the process was local, and it ran smoothly. I know a man who has been waiting seven months for a grant to which he is entitled but he cannot get it. We can see what we did with the HSE when we formed it in favour of the old health boards. Once we got rid of the old health boards, we took away local power from the people. A former Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, promised to get rid of the HSE. For the ordinary person, this meant that the decision-makers and fat cats in the HSE would be eliminated. He only got rid of the board of directors and what has changed since then? Absolutely nothing. We are still seeing what used to happen with the board of directors in place. When the board was in place, the executive closed the accident and emergency department in Roscommon but with a new board in place, the executive is threatening to close the accident and emergency department in Portlaoise. There is a psychiatric unit in Castlerea that has housed 23 patients for the past 15 to 20 years and they are happy and content in that place but the HSE has decided that these people - some of whom have no advocates to speak for them - are not in the right place. The HSE believes they might be better off in private nursing homes.

All this has proven to be a disaster and centralisation should be included in any debate we have. I ask the Leader to seriously consider my request.