John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will raise two or three issues before I get into the wider context. The first is the issue of palliative care, which I raised in the House a year ago. This is the result of a HSE decision. The CHO 8 area, as the Minister of State knows, covers counties Louth, Meath, Laois and Offaly. A decision was made by the HSE that in the Louth and Meath areas, only clinical nurse specialists would be able to administer palliative care. In every other health service area, public health nurses are able to administer palliative care. I will give an example of how this is silly. If I live on the border of counties Louth and Monaghan, in County Louth, I have to have a clinical nurse specialist deliver palliative care. If I live two miles away in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, a public health nurse can do it. What is the difference? Public health nurses, of whom we have more, are able to come into people's homes and administer end-of-life care. It is part of the cancer strategy going back a number of years that somebody has the right to die in their own home if they so wish. What happens when we only have clinical nurse specialists providing palliative care is that people in counties Louth and Meath end up having to go directly to hospital when they get close to the end-of-life stage and have to receive palliative care there. That is just a decision by the HSE in this particular area of CHO 8. In counties Offaly and Laois, for example, which are also part of CHO 8, public health nurses administer palliative care. It is a clear discrepancy, based on the postcode lottery of whether someone lives in counties Louth or Meath or Cavan and Monaghan. That is not a decision made by the Government, but by the HSE. It is something I raised a year ago and about which I wrote to the HSE. There has not been much movement on it. Given the Minister of State's track record on health in this House over the past decade and a half, it is something I would perhaps like to speak with him about privately to see if we can get some movement.

The other issue I want to raise is the Leave Our Leave campaign, of which the Minister of State is also aware. People and women who are pregnant have to use up their maternity leave to undergo treatment. A man in the same situation would not have to do so. What is happening is down to a discrepancy in the legislation. It would take a simple amendment to fix that. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, said at the Green Party conference last October that he would fix and change that. I am not criticising the Minister, but it has still not been fixed. I raised the matter at a meeting of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party, at which the Minister of State was also in attendance, with the Taoiseach, Deputy Harris, and directly with his office. The issue is that while we clearly want to fix it, the Government is in extra time, for want of a better phrase. We all acknowledge the political reality. We may be here for a certain number of months or less, but we are getting close to the end. At this point, what the Government wants to do with the Leave Our Leave campaign is amend and fix it, but it is including it with a lot of other legislation that is not really being processed. Can we please make a simple amendment to the Act from 2015 or 2016, rather than lobbing that amendment in with a lot of other legislation? It is a simple fix and one I am keen to see progressed before the end of this Government's term. It is important to deal with this before the Government leaves office because there are so many young mothers who have gone through chemotherapy and have not had the time to spend with their newborn babies that other people have had because they are undergoing lifesaving treatment. They will have to tell their stories again once a new Government comes in, regardless of its make-up or the parties involved. These women will have to start from scratch. That is tough for them. We know what the issue is. We know how to fix it and we should try to do that as quickly as possible with a simple amendment before the end of this Government's term.

I raise something I saw with my mother who passed away 16 July last year. We are coming up on one year from it. Our family has experienced the HSE and how wonderful it is, and how well it works when you are in the system. When you are in the system, it works really well. I have seen that first hand. I have seen how incredible our nurses, doctors and other staff are in the HSE and our cancer services, particularly where I am from in County Louth. They are owed a massive debt of gratitude by families across this country for how they treat our loved ones with such dignity, respect and compassion when people go through some of the hardest moments of their lives. I pay tribute to our health staff.