Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The area and village of Drimnagh is a very distinct community within the constituency of Dublin South-Central. It has its own unique character and is led by a representative organisation called Dynamic Drimnagh, which comprises a number of representative groups and organisations within the community and speaks for the community. Back in 2011, the people of Drimnagh were promised a primary care centre. This community of Drimnagh is the size of Killarney; it has that level of population. In December 2019, the then Minister for Health and the then local Deputy Catherine Byrne announced the primary care centre. I have been on the floor of this House asking the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, on numerous occasions for an update on where that primary care centre is at; it is delayed and delayed. It is 12 years since the first promise to that community. It now has two GPs and while it had a public health nurse up to April this year, it no longer does because that service was moved to Crumlin. It is being deprived of services continually. On 1 June this year, in this House, when the Minister came in to talk about capital expenditure in the health services, I raised with him that I was aware that there was a design team and work was ongoing on Curlew Road. I am sure the Minister of State's speech will be full of that. I also want to draw to his attention that on Davitt Road west, the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group is building an oncology service and has plans for a primary care centre. It is using a modular method that will be a very quick build. The delivery of that service could happen a lot faster if there was joined-up thinking and that could be the focus of the primary care centre for the people of Drimnagh. The Minister committed, on the record of this House, to give me a written response to that matter. I have not received anything, hence today's Commencement matter.

A town like Killarney would not be left without a primary care centre. The Minister recently opened the Rialto primary care centre. He talked, quite rightly, about how central to Sláintecare primary care centres are and having everything in a community available and accessible to that community because it takes the burden off hospitals and how fantastic that is. It is fantastic - the Rialto centre is an example of how it can be done and done well. The elephant in the room was that an entire community - Drimnagh - is invisible to the Department of Health; it is merely stripping out services from that entire community. It would not happen in a town outside of a suburb of Dublin but it is okay for Drimnagh to be subsumed into Crumlin and to be ignored as a community with a distinct character with a right to a local health service on its doorstep, which the Government has promised for 12 years. I am mindful that it was my party's Minister who announced this in 2019. It is in the capital plans. I have been told that Curlew Road will be shovel-ready for December 2024; I do not believe that date will be held to. That is part of a series of promises on which these people are let down. There is an ageing population who cannot travel to the Crumlin centre or to Armagh Road. They need something on their own doorstep and local to them.It confounds any sort of logic that nobody in the Department of Health is looking at what the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group executive is doing. It is proposing to build in Davitt Road, in the middle of the Drimnagh community, even though a competing project is proceeding elsewhere. I need to know that this has been considered and I need an update for the people of Drimnagh in this regard.