PRESS RELEASE
Dublin, 29 March 2016; 13:15 IST
For immediate release

Ireland Celebrates Neuro-Rehab Services – Pádraig returns to Ireland

Staff Reporter
Ireland is celebrating the opening of the new 235-bed National Rehabilitation Hospital and a 25-bed acute neurorehabilitation unit in Beaumont Hospital (both referred to originally in a publication with a foreword by Minister of Health, Mary Hearney).

This follows a radical overhaul of the Irish neurological rehabilitation system, the “revolution in rehabilitation“ called for by National Director of Clinical Strategy and Programmes, Dr Áine Carroll, in 2011.

In addition, the Department of Health, together with ABI patients and their families, celebrated the first anniversary of the community-based, long-term and intensive neurological rehabilitation centres run by the ABI Network in Dublin, Galway, Cork, and Letterkenny. They were established following an intensive period of consultations between the Department of Health, the Neurological Alliance Ireland, and ABI patients and families.

In a surprise development, Apple and Google had decided to provide funding for the centers established by the ABI Netork stating (actual figures, not direct quotes, from Ireland’s top business website Finfacts):

We in Apple paid just $713m in overseas corporation tax on foreign profits of $36.87bn in our 2012 fiscal year ending last September. That’s a tax rate of just 1.9%. So we decided to give a little dig out to our Irish friends working for neurological rehabilitation. Brain injury can hit anyone, at anytime. We want to do our bit to help those who most need it.

Google had a foreign tax rate of just 4.4% in 2012 and it provided for foreign tax of $358m in 2012 compared with $2.5bn in the US, thanks to our Irish friends. Anyone can be affected by a brain injury at any time, just out of the blue. It’s a terrible injury and so hard to live with. We wanted to give something back to our friends in Ireland, and especially to those most in need.

 In a letter to the parents of Pádraig Schaler, a young Gaeilgeoir (23) who was virtually emigrated to Germany by his Irish Health System because it could not provide adequate treatment for him in his own country, the Taoiseach had stated two years ago:

“Thank you for your letter regarding your family’s experience with the health system in Ireland. My office has discussed the details of the letter with the Department of Health and I am after asking the Department’s officials to get in contact with you without delay. The anger, dissatisfaction and frustration that you feel are clear and understood. You are right that Pádraig should be able to receive care here in his own country, the place where his parents and friends live. But, as your experiences show, the health system that we have here at the moment is unsatisfactory; it is not able to provide health care for its patients when they need it most.”

At the celebrations today, the Taoiseach stated:

“So for a change, this new health service will be ready and waiting if you and your family need it.” We are happy that Pádraig can now return to the country that he loves so much and to his friends who staid with him in his German exile. We are also so happy to see his family reunited in their Dublin home, a family that was sadly split into two when Pádraig’s parents had to spend time with their son in Germany.

For more information, contact:

• The Department of the Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Upper Merrion Street, Dublin 2.
• The Department of Health, Hawkins House, Hawkins Street, Dublin1.
• ABI Network ℅ caringforpadraig@gmail.com, 087-6736414

———————— ENDS ——————–

Sadly, the above is fiction, an imaginary, future press release from the year 2016. In the meantime, it’s day 19 of our wait to be contacted by James Reilly’s Department of Health, following the Taoiseach’s request to get in touch “without delay”.

Interestingly, the quotes in the press release are correct with two exceptions: the last statement from the Taoiseach is from a letter sent to us on 10 March 2014 (just the bit in “quotes” though, I made up the rest), and while the “statements” by Apple and Google contain the correct figures in relation to the companies’ tax rate etc. (as reported by Finfacts), their statements in support of the ABI Network were in fact not issued by the companies, yet. – It should be stated that I am writing this on an Apple computer and gather the data using Google. What an irony.

Today, the reality of rehabilitation services in Ireland is, sadly, still a scandal and a horror for those depending on it. Even worse: we as a country seem to have given up hope that these services could ever be brought up to a level that would be even close to that of our European neighbours.

Mr Macey said that neurorehabilitation services in Ireland are recognised to be the worst in Europe. And even if the improvements being sought were implemented, they would still be worse than those in any other European country with the exception of the UK.

“For example, we currently have 7 consultants to serve specialist neurorehabilitation needs across the whole country. But even if we had 50 we would still have the lowest number per capita in Europe with the exception of the UK. And if it increased to 150, we would still be behind countries like Estonia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Croatia and Serbia.

“In other words, what we are really aspiring to is not to have services that any country could be proud of, or even services that are mediocre – but to be the second worst country in Europe for neurorehabilitation.

(Extract from a Press Release by the Neurological Alliance of Ireland, dated 20.02.2013)

Instead, it seems that the Government is happy not just to emigrate its unemployed, but also its sick. Here is another extract from a press release by the Neurological Alliance Ireland (NAI), of 01. May 2013:

NAI Development Manager, Ms Rogers, said that although the Government blames the economic collapse for the failure to improve services, many cost-free proposals in its national neurorehabilitation policy published at the end of 2011 still haven’t been implemented. “We’re almost halfway into the three year lifespan of the policy and not only has the crucial implementation plan not been published – the Government still hasn’t even set up an implementation group.” Speaking on the launch video for the RED CARD campaign, supported by members of Sunday’s winning Dublin GAA team, Emma Rogan, a young person with multiple sclerosis, said: “As a young person with a neurological condition in Ireland I am afraid for my future. People have said to me that the best thing you can do if you are diagnosed with a neurological condition in this country is to emigrate”.

Now – what kind of indictment of our government is this? For how much longer will we tolerate that, in addition to the unemployed, we now also emigrate our sick people?

Finally, to the most important part of this rather (with apologies) long blog: Pádraig is doing well. There have been no dramatic changes in his condition, but steady progress. He is still moving, for example his tongue, his hand, his foot, when we ask him to do so. He opens his eye when we come into his room and talk to him. He has started to swallow much much better, to a point that when his carers try to take out subglottic secretions (which he should swallow), they find very little (because he is swallowing so much better). His legs are still bandaged because of the clot in his left leg, but his special stockings have been fitted and ordered, and they should arrive any day now. As will his specially-made wheelchair. The roses are showing their first buds, the date in the rose garden is getting closer.