Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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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.

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I would like to thank the Senator, on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, for providing the opportunity to update the House on Drimnagh primary care centre. A central objective of the programme for Government is to deliver increased levels of integrated health care, with service delivery reoriented towards general practice, primary care and community-based services to enable a home first approach.

Primary care centres play an essential role in the delivery of that objective and significant progress has been made in the delivery of these centres nationally. These centres support the delivery of integrated care by facilitating closer co-ordination and co-operation between health professionals across different disciplines. They also provide a single point of access to services for the individual and can serve more broadly as a resource for the community. There are currently 165 primary care centres operational, with 14 more under construction and 12 of these are scheduled to be delivered during 2023. We have seen huge investment in primary care centres throughout the country over the past ten years. They are a new departure and they have been welcomed by the various communities.

The Drimnagh primary care centre will be located on the existing site at Curlew Road. It will provide vital services in community healthcare organisation, CHO, 7 and specifically in the south Dublin suburb of Drimnagh. Funding was allocated in capital programme 2022 to commence the design process for Drimnagh primary care centre. A design team has been appointed and the preliminary design process is under way. The local service is reviewing accommodation requirements to ensure the building will accommodate the services and primary care teams required to deliver the healthcare needs to the Drimnagh area. Capital approval has been granted to complete a strategic assessment report, SAR, for Drimnagh primary care centre, and a consultant is currently being appointed to complete the SAR.

The primary care centre in Drimnagh is envisioned to facilitate a primary care team, including: addiction and older persons services; older persons day care services alongside public health and community nursing; physiotherapy; occupational therapy; speech and language therapy; dietetics; and counselling. It will also consist of three general practitioner suites, which are important because we have seen GPs move into primary care centres and it is nearly a one-stop shop for people when they have to have other issues identified.

It will also include a day care centre for persons with Alzheimer's illness, which is close to my heart. To date, we have 40 Alzheimer's-specific day care centres open and we have a great working relationship with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. During Covid we discovered from infection prevention and control that some of the premises we were providing services on for dementia-specific day care, that they probably were not fit for purpose for infection prevention and control measures. We spent a lot of time and money during Covid to make sure these services were fit for purpose. We need them everywhere and it would be fantastic to see a specific day care centre for people with Alzheimer's disease. Some 11 people are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease every day of the week and we have 64,000 people in the country with a dementia diagnosis. However, we probably have as many people with dementia who do not have that diagnosis.

The primary care centre will also have a community centre, including a crèche, which will be great too. These services will be integrated with the proposed on-site GP service and provide an integrated service to the public all under one roof. As the Senator knows, all capital development proposals must progress through a number of approval stages, in line with the public spending code, including detailed appraisal, planning, design and procurement, before funding for each stage can be confirmed. Having listened to and had so many meetings with the Minister, he is frustrated with the slow pace of this, including the appraisal of the planning, the design and the procurement. He is hoping to expedite that across all capital spends for health services.

Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State. She paints a fabulous picture of what the Drimnagh primary care centre will look like and it will have incredibly valuable services. My problem is that there are no dates in respect of it and the day when a resident of Drimnagh walks through the doors of that primary care centre could be ten years away for all I know. She mentioned preliminary reports and strategic assessment reports but how long do they take? What is their purpose? I say that as someone who does not understand what they are. Presumably, they are necessary but is it a report that will be followed by another report, following which we still will not have a primary care centre when it is desperately needed by the people here? That is my concern. We need to start seeing timelines and we need accountability for those timelines. I appreciate that is not necessarily always within the Minister's gift but it is in his gift to drive it and to demand accountability from design teams and the process.

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I reiterate that we have seen a huge expansion of primary care services and centres over the past ten years. We have 165, with 14 under construction, 12 of which are scheduled to be delivered in 2023. Unfortunately, however, the one in Drimnagh is not included in that. There is one close to my heart in Waterford that I am trying to push as well but the precedent is there. Every year, like the HSE-run community nursing units, which we announced seven of in December, the roll-out will continue because there is a strategic plan in place to deliver these.

I know it is frustrating when there are no clear guidelines but, at the same time, the Drimnagh primary care centre is on the capital plan and funding was provided in 2022. We have not seen the capital plan for 2023 yet but the most important thing I always find is that a project is in the capital plan. This project is in appendix 2 and it will move up to appendix 1. We are frustrated in the Department at the time it takes for any capital investment building and a lot of time is lost in the preliminary years. I know a lot of scoping has to be done at design and planning stages but I do not see why both stages cannot run in parallel with each other. I am frustrated by that in the areas of mental health and older people and it is something the Minister has put a focus on.

Martin Conway (Fine Gael)
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I want to acknowledge the phenomenal work that Senator Seery Kearney does for the people of Drimnagh in this House, week in and week out.