Health Services Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Frankie Feighan (FG), Sligo-Leitrim I thank Senator Tully for raising this very important issue. I am taking this Commencement matter on behalf of my colleague the Minister for Health. I thank the Senator for the opportunity to address the House on this matter. As she has outlined, it is simply not good enough that somebody has to wait two months, going back and forward and back. Somebody should be able to make a decision there, so I thank her for highlighting this. I will bring it back to the Minister immediately. I will outline in general terms the current position on the provision of aids and appliances. The HSE provides a wide range of aids and appliances free of charge to eligible people following assessment by a relevant health professional. These are provided through community services known as community-funded schemes and play a key role in assisting and supporting people to maintain everyday functioning and to remain living in their homes and local communities. A national list, including prescribing criteria, can be found on the HSE website. Separately, under the long-term illness scheme, patients receive drugs, medicines and medical and surgical appliances directly related to the treatment of their illness free of charge. Under the drugs payment scheme, no individual pays more than €80 a month towards the cost of approved prescribed medicines and medical appliances. The DPS, as the Senator knows, is not means tested and is available to anyone ordinarily resident in Ireland. The DPS significantly reduces the cost burden for individuals with ongoing expenditure on medicines. I turn to the specific issue raised by the Senator this morning. Officials from the Department have reached out to the HSE directly on this issue, and the latter is engaging with relevant personnel at a local level. As this matter is particular to the provision of specific service in a local area, it is a matter the HSE will need to investigate in further detail at local level. To that end, I invite Senator Tully to share any further detailed information regarding this case, if available, in order that Department officials can liaise with HSE colleagues to further investigate the matter. Again, I thank the Senator for raising this issue and thank her in advance for any additional information she can share. Officials in the Department of Health will continue to engage with HSE officials on this matter and will be happy to provide the Senator with a further update should additional relevant information become available. There are people out there who are paid good money to deliver a service. For a parent or a child to have to wait two months and then, by the time they get the aid, for the child to have outgrown it is simply not good enough. I know the Minister will act with her officials to try to resolve this issue immediately. I thank the Senator for coming into the Seanad to raise it. She should not have to do so; it should have been sorted out on the ground and it was not. --- 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/seanad/2026-04-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-15