Hospital Services
Dail Éireann — 2020-11-19
============================================================

Sorca Clarke (SF), Longford-Westmeath

I welcome the commitment the Minister of State has given. Retaining the service at Mullingar makes sense not only from a moral point of view but also from a fiscal perspective. Children learn very early to manage their diabetes and it is a habit that follows them into adulthood. When they become adults, that habit reduces the cost to the HSE in terms of the number of hospitalisations and interventions needed. However, an issue that has cropped up during this period is that there has been a distinct lack of information and no clarity given to parents and patients. That creates a vacuum where misinformation can take hold and rumour can take over, which causes further stress and pressure for people. We need a commitment that the service will not be impacted while the recruitment process is ongoing. Heaven forbid that a nurse is not recruited.
I agree with the Minister of State that we are facing an epidemic of diabetes. I suffered from gestational diabetes. In a response to a parliamentary question from my colleague, Deputy Cullinane, we were told that there are 26.5 full-time equivalent diabetes nurse positions. How do we manage an epidemic with that number?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-11-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-11-19