Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo the sympathies offered to Micko's family. As for the assertion that Kerry has had the best football team in history, I will just say “five in a row”. As someone who used to go to my grandmother in Killorglin, Kerry, in the 1970s, I remember the great rivalry between Dublin and Kerry, and Heffo's Army. However, the question of which football team was the greatest ever is still out for the jury.

I want to raise a couple of issues, the first being the situation that confronts Ms Evelyne Cynk. She is a disabled young lady from Germany who has come to Ireland to follow her dream of pursuing a masters degree in creative writing in UCC. She is a very talented artist and has been facilitated by UCC by having been given accessible accommodation. However, she is being failed, again, by the HSE. The HSE is either unable or, more likely, unwilling to provide her with the care package with which she would be provided as a matter of course in Germany and with which all disabled citizens throughout the rest of the European Union would be provided. At the moment, it owes the care provider she is using €55,000. She is a young woman with a complex disability, and while doing her course away from home she has to contend with the stress, uncertainty and fear of having a debt of €55,000 because the HSE will not, or cannot, discharge its functions as an agency of the State. Also on disability matters, I want to raise the issue of the HIQA report on the independent review of governance of Children's Health Ireland. The report was published at midday today and I have started reading it. It really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Yet again, Ireland is shown to be a pathologically ableist state. I am finding it hard to read the document because of what is contained within it but also because of the language used. In the limited time available to me, I will say that, when you read this report and see the repeated failings of the executive leadership team and board of Children's Health Ireland, you could not have confidence in their being charged with the move from Connolly Hospital and the hospitals at Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght to the new children's hospital. This scandal is not about the billions spent on the hospital; it is about the children and the families. The families whose children are on waiting lists or who have been operated on in this manner are very upset today. They are completely in the dark. They are hearing nothing from CHI. There has been no consultation with them. We need a full statutory inquiry into this. Could we have the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, in to the House for a debate as to whether she can really have confidence in the executive leadership team and board of CHI with regard to the move to the new children's hospital? This is another inflection point.