Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome. It is very pleasant to see a Minister of State from the Department of Health responding to a health matter. I am very grateful for that. We have been here since June 2020. In December 2019, the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, and the then Fine Gael Deputy for Dublin South Central and former Minister of State, Catherine Byrne, announced the commitment to the Drimnagh primary care centre at the Mother McAuley site in Drimnagh and gave great promises of what would be involved in that. They gave a timeline of appointment of a design team the following year and that by 2021, we would have a shovel in the ground and would see the construction of the site. I appreciate that Covid came in the way of that. I am very mindful of it.

However, I wrote to the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, in July 2020 just to ask whether this project was progressing. The design team is something. One can go out to tender with that. There are no physical meetings on it. I received a reply in September, within which the very chilling phrase, "it is a dynamic process", was used, which tells me this will stretch on forever. The community of Drimnagh have been waiting for this primary care centre for an awfully long time. It was an overdue announcement when it was made in 2019, let alone that we are now in 2023. I had Commencement matter debates on it on 8 February 2021 and on 29 June 2021, when I was told the design team tender process was under way. Since then, I have heard from councillors who were told in their contact with the HSE that a design team was appointed. I am looking for an update, that being the case, at the very least, last year. Will we see significant construction progress this year?

There are a few things going on. First, the plans for that are to rebuild an Alzheimer's unit at the Mother McAuley centre site and to have a community creche and a state-of-the-art primary care centre. Residents in Drimnagh are relying on services that are depleting all of the time. One example of that is the children's disability network team, CDNT, service within the Armagh Road. It is at all-time low levels of staffing, which is quite frightening. I do not know. I recognise the challenge of recruitment but maybe part of recruitment is offering people a fantastic facility in which to work and has state-of-the-art facilities that go with these primary care centres. I have seen great successes in others, such as in Rialto. We have others throughout the constituency but this one, in particular, is long overdue.

It is a symbol to the people of Drimnagh and especially the group, Dynamic Drimnagh, that brings together all of the organisations and communities and is mobilising for the village of Drimnagh, which is long overdue and needs to part of the construction planning there. The community looks at increased numbers of apartments being built, their population going up and still no guarantee they will have the healthcare services and primary care centre.This is symbolic of the way forward for the community of Drimnagh. If it has the primary care centre, that will be a symbol and a tangible experience of the commitment of Government to the people there. Then we will be building a community and village around that in a tangible way in the fantastic plans it has. I am keen to hear from the Minister of State where are we as of today.