Ceisteanna ó na Comhaltaí Eile - Other Members’ Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-03-05 ============================================================ Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow I thank Deputy Carrigy for this question. I will first say how delighted I am to hear of the significant investment plan at St. Joseph's. I thank the Deputy and our colleague and friend, Councillor Peggy Nolan, for her tireless advocacy in relation to that. I remember meeting her about this on a number of occasions. Along with the Deputy, she was rightly a strong advocate for it. That is good news for St. Joseph's and good news for Longford. I look forward to the investment plans announced by the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, progressing and to the benefits they will bring to people in St. Joseph's. It is a wonderful place that needs capital investment. I take seriously the point about Longford being an area where we want to see more housing supply. I hope the decisions we have taken over the past number of days, particularly on developer-led approaches to water infrastructure, will speed up the delivery of housing in rural and regional Ireland, including County Longford. I take the point that as we increase our housing supply and population, we will need to see an increase in our health and social services as well. Therefore, the issue of the delivery of primary care centres in County Longford is an important one that the Deputy has been pursuing for some time. We have seen significant progress on primary care centres across the country. We now have 180 opened and a further seven under construction. It is the truth that as of today Longford is served by just one primary care centre, which is Flancare primary care centre in Ballyminion, just outside Longford town. While good services are provided there, including GP services, ophthalmology, counselling, community intervention, social work, immunisation, health promotion, some diabetic retinal screening, pulmonary services and addiction services, it is clear there is a need for a significant expansion in the primary care network. The HSE has advised that a satellite speech and language therapy service is now being offered to children two days a week from Ballymahon medical centre. It is in a room being rented from the HSE. I know that it is not yet in a primary care centre, but it is a new service that I think is making a difference to children in the area. My note here tells me that, as the Deputy told the House, there have been some issues. The HSE advised a preferred developer for Edgeworthstown primary care centre last year that it would not be progressing with the project and that it was reviewing the most appropriate options to proceed with the development and conducting an overall health service needs assessment for the county as a whole. It is looking at the needs in Granard and Ballymahon as well. The Department of Health and the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, are currently waiting to hear back from the HSE in terms of its service needs assessment for the county. We are very eager to get that as a Government. We want to be in a position to progress the roll-out of primary care centres, so I urge that the work be completed as quickly as possible. On foot of the Deputy raising this question in the Dáil today, I will perhaps arrange for him to have a meeting with the Department of Health and the HSE capital team in this regard. We have capital funds available. We have a variety of ways in which we can roll out and deliver primary care centres, but we need that service needs assessment to be concluded as a matter of urgency. --- 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/2026-03-05/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-05