Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am particularly delighted for reasons that will become apparent that it is the Minister of State who is here, although I would have also welcomed the Minister. I will skip all the plaudits for Sláintecare. We are all behind it. There is not any lack of political will in respect of it. There never has been. That is not an issue. The issue is not a lack of money because successive Ministers have put major money behind it. There is evidence of that in the form of new primary care centres. The system and aspects of it, as they were planned to work, are working. The resignations and frustrations have not occurred because of a lack of will on the part of the Government or a lack of funding. I wonder if it comes down to how the HSE does its business. That is a question I would ask. I note the facial comment.

There are some difficulties in respect of which answers to our questions are warranted. For instance, the HSE works alongside organisations in the delivery of services, particularly in the area of disabilities, with which it is aligned. There is not pay parity between the section 38 and section 39 organisations. There ends up being a migration of staff and front-line service challenges arising as a consequence. There needs to be some innovation to change, fix and deal with that. Even where there are HSE and Tusla staff under the same roof, at times there are differences in how they are funded and in their terms and conditions of employment.

The Minister of State travelled to Donegal last Friday. I will not get into the specifics of that for many reasons. Let us take the example there of decision-making and management decision-making. What I am talking about is not unique to that service. At the weekend, many concerned and frightened parents contacted me to express their concerns about what will happen when their children need to go into residential care of the State. How will they know they will be safe? Who will advocate for them? Who will support them? Who will make sure safeguarding is in place? One of the organisations that contacted me at the weekend commented that it has a large number of safeguarding issues, that it has been trying to work with the HSE for the past five years and that it has reached a situation whereby it will have to move an individual to a new house. The HSE will not fund that. The organisation in question has asked the HSE to met the families involved but it has refused to do so . The house involved has been deemed by HIQA to be non-compliant due to the safeguarding issues to which I refer. The organisation has put forward solutions but the HSE's community healthcare organisation area 7 has refused to engage with it. There is something there that needs to be discussed. Perhaps there is an impediment among those involved and, to be fair, it is not their fault. We need to be solution-focused in how we ensure that there is the political will regarding Sláintecare is there, that there is funding available and that there is administrative accountability to ensure we are getting the delivery our people demand and deserve. I was not bad in sticking to the time.