Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I raise the issue of public health nursing services in Curlew Road Health Centre in Drimnagh, which are about to be moved to Armagh Road Health Centre in Crumlin. Questions have already been asked about this withdrawal and the response has been that it is a temporary measure, and that there will be a mother and child clinic. However, I need to impress upon the decision makers that it is not acceptable for the area of Drimnagh to be left without a public health nurse service. I need to contextualise this. Somewhere in the heads of those who make decisions, Drimnagh and Crumlin are lumped together and taken en masse. Drimnagh is an area with a population the size of Cobh. It currently has building work and planning permissions going on that mean it will soon, by itself, have a population the size of Newbridge. The people of Drimnagh have been promised a primary care centre since 2011, when 20 announcements were made. Of those primary care centres, 19 have been built. The Drimnagh one currently has a promise for turning the sod of December 2024, or some time in the last quarter of next year. In the meantime, elderly people in Drimnagh are expected to travel to Crumlin, which has no direct connecting bus service unless they take a very long walk. This is simply not good enough. Drimnagh has only two GPs. The area has been stripped of its physiotherapy and social care provision. All of those services have already gone to the Armagh Road centre. It is not acceptable that health services for the people of Drimnagh have been completely stripped away. There has been no consultation with residents or with the Alzheimer's day care unit that is based in the Mother McAuley Centre on Curlew Road. The HSE owns a vast amount of land on Davitt Road that is just sitting there idle, with nothing happening on it. There is no consultation, no plan and no engagement with residents. There is a fantastic group, Dynamic Drimnagh, that is ready to engage and has come up with well thought-through plans and proposals that would serve the people of the area. However, all that happens in Drimnagh is that one planning permission after another is given, most of them for build-to-rent accommodation. This results in a transitory population, with no infrastructure or supports in place.

Now we have this additional insult, whereby the 12,500 people in Drimnagh apparently do not deserve the provision of a public health nurse. It is somehow acceptable that they are left without that service. It is not acceptable and the people of Drimnagh will be very active in expressing their view on that. The reason given for the withdrawal of the service is that there is a shortage of staff in the Armagh Road centre. I would like to know why there is a shortage of staff. We discussed this issue during a Commencement debate last week. Right next door to the Armagh Road facility is a special needs school that has been promised a service two hours a week for its 43 pupils. That service cannot be delivered because the turnover of staff in the Armagh Road facility is incredibly high. There is something going on there and the people of Drimnagh are expected to pay the price for it, in addition to the stripping out of services in Crumlin. The people of Drimnagh deserve their own family care centre and for this decision on the public health nurse service to be reversed as a matter of urgency.