Healthcare Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-05
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

The element of preventative care is crucial from the perspective of diet, lifestyle management and the ways in which people exercise. The gym membership piece is interesting but exercise is available in lots of different ways. I am seeing different forms of community exercise groups. There is a fantastic facility in a GAA centre in south Sligo and in other places. What you are doing is turning up as part of a community and going through the different machines. Whether people are post-hospital or post-diagnosis, using those safe, community facilities to build up their strength and bone mass is an important part of preventing illness, future falls and recovering. Of course, it is an extremely difficult situation to have the fear of falling particularly in the winter when weather is bad, and hospitals are already under pressure from respiratory illness. We have seen this winter in particular that combination of respiratory illness and falls from a prolonged period of bad weather. It does not help anybody and makes living as an older person that bit more difficult.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-05