Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)

I thank the Cathaoirleach and wish her the best of luck. She will be a fantastic Chair. I welcome everyone, particularly those who have been appointed in the last period of time. Best of luck to them. We need them all to be successful so I hope that they will be. I welcome those who have been around for a while as well. In fairness to the CEO, one thing about Mr. Gloster is that his frankness is refreshing. Whether you agree or disagree with him, what he says, he means. The frankness is refreshing.

Deputy Cannon was fantastic earlier. He took the time to explain something that has been bugging me for years. I have raised this thing for a decade about ehealth. In a previous life, for both Bord Fáilte and Fáilte Ireland, I was tasked with building the national tourism database. I would love somebody in the next Government to be appointed within Government as a junior Minister for ehealth and to take it over.

I have spoken publicly about my own father being in the UHL Nenagh unit. He is into his fifth week there. I will be going to see him later. On the day he was admitted I happened to be in Dublin and I got a call from the emergency department going through all his history, which I gave. I will never forget it. I had to leave my phone on during the night because of the situation. At 3.37 in the morning I got a phone call from another doctor in the hospital asking me the exact same thing. I am not saying that is anyone's fault. That is what is there. Over the past four odd weeks, I have had eight calls from doctors where I tell them the exact same thing, except I keep adding on to it because of my father's situation. I have written in down in a note and I keep it with me. I add on things all the time because he has had different issues and I have to explain the imaging on the scans and all of that. We have a real problem. From an efficiency point of view, I do not need to tell the witnesses that this is causing such inefficiencies. It creates such costs and, without a shadow of a doubt, it affects outcomes. We need to address it. I saw the table and I respect the outcomes in our health system. They are quite good. I do not want to dwell on that but I wanted to add my personal experience to what Deputy Cannon said, because it was excellent.

I have limited time but I have an issue with the whole mid-west and UHL. I am not going to get into the Aoife Johnston reports and all of that. We are in desperate need of a decision about a model 3 hospital. I refer to the reconfiguration and all of that. I have a sign on the Hanly report up my office which predates my time in politics where I campaigned against it. I accept that the care, once people get into the system, is good. I listed off nurses, doctors, medical attendants in Limerick and Nenagh in the Dáil yesterday who were fantastic. They were incredible, brilliant. As I am sitting here, I am thinking of Ray who is the healthcare attendant in UHL who is probably looking after my father as I speak. However, we have an issue. We also have a narrative problem which can have counterproductive outcomes. I really encourage and ask the HSE, in fact I am begging it, to engage in a campaign in the mid-west to the public about the services that are available and how people should attend. In some cases, they are not attending. I have said publicly I had to get my father to attend. I do not want to get into it because I will get emotional but I had to get my father to attend. Will the HSE please engage in that? The MAUs have vacancies in the evenings and at weekends. That would stop people from ending up in accident and emergency departments. Will the witnesses engage and please put some campaign and thought towards all the services and into encouraging people to attend? People have to and should attend, as bad as the narrative and the situation is and all the problems. Will they do that?