Teamwork makes the dream work
(translation, anon.)

Last week, some of the team that makes the dream work met for an early dinner

They brought food and drink for a good evening in great company. We were invited to join. Some of the stories swapped I had never heard. They made me feel old. The stories might even have made some of Pádraig’s friends feel old (though they don’t know what old feels like.)

Later in the week, some of them went to visit a friend in Carlow who couldn’t make it that night. They had an exclusive dinner, prepared by the chef just for Pádraig. Before you ask: no, they didn’t bring a taster back to the house.

Judging by the pictures they brought back, and judging by Pádraig’s feedback, the hour-long trip to the country was more than worth it.

The week gave ‘inclusion’ a whole new meaning for me.

Contrast that with the ongoing HSE practice of “placing” teenagers in nursing homes.

Makes me wonder who should be “placed” where.

This weekend, we are on the way to Germany. Driving to Flensburg to get a brand new wheelchair and get it fitted for Pádraig. It will take about a week. Driving back to Dublin the coming weekend.

There was no way the HSE would supply an appropriate non-standard chair for someone who is 6’7″, active and regularly out and about. A therapist and now also a good friend who is so experienced that she worked with the Bobath’s and supported the Therapy Centre in Burgau in its early day, recommended a Scandinavian-made chair which is now ready for collection and adaptation in a workshop near Flensburg.

Pádraig’s friends and neighbours organised fundraisers and cake sales, some made a direct donation, some decided to contribute what they would have normally spent on their family Christmas presents. In the end it all made it possible for us to buy this wheelchair.

It irks me to think that this practically amounted to a fundraiser for the HSE who should have paid for an appropriate wheelchair, and that we started to look into this when his HSE supplied chair broke; when his HSE OT suggested to him to stay in bed for a few weeks, potentially months, until a replacement chair would be sourced.

But I feel we are travelling on eagles’ wings to Germany. On the wings of those who made it all possible. Strong, determined, supportive, responsible, decent people who are about everything our health system too often lacks.

A system that says there is no money to finance the new services proposed and prepared by An Saol to keep young people out of nursing homes; when they have no problem finding the money to ‘place’ teenagers in nursing home.

On Monday, the big news was that Dublin City Council had granted planning permission for Teach An Saol.

This is a massive milestone.

It is the result of the hard work and dedication of a large number of Ireland’s leading companies who first submitted the application in December ’24, and then submitted the answers to a request for further information by DCC in December ’25, on behalf of the An Saol Foundation. All work by these companies was carried out pro bono for the An Saol Foundation.

We could start the tender process now if we had the go ahead from the HSE.

As you know, the current proposal from the HSE is to take over the site, the design, the planning permission, and the building, to call it Teach na Cumas, and offer a yet unspecified lease agreement to An Saol for a portion of the building.

Whereas our proposal is to get our building work finished based on our plans for Teach An Saol.

Four years into the Teach An Saol project, we now need to give it the last big push to bring the project over the line. We worked for Teach An Saol. Not for Teach na Cumas. Ní neart go cur le chéile.

The excuse that no funding is available to keep young people out of nursing homes is bizarre, when millions are available and spent to put them into nursing home.