For over three months

children, who are staying with her parents, for a ‘couple of hours’ each week.

Nicola estimates that between disability funding, mental health funding and, the lion’s share, hospital funding, it’s costing somewhere in the region of €40,000 to €45,000 per month to keep her daughter at Wexford General. She has to be kept in a private room for her own safety and the safety of fellow patients and this is also a room that is desperately needed by others. Nicola says that for an extra €8,000, her daughter could be moved into the bed in an appropriate care centre and could even be back out within six months. As things stand, she has been told to prepare for the fact that she and her daughter could spend upwards of 300 days in Wexford General.

‘I just don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘It’s a busy season here at the hospital at the moment too and they desperately need beds. Yet, we’re left sitting her until Simon Harris decides that money is available. He’s told us, however, that this definitely won’t be until the end of January at the very earliest. We’ve been offered a bed at Nua Healthcare in Kildare, but we’ve been told to forget about it as the funding is not there. We’ve more or less been told that if we want the treatment, we’ll have to wait for it.’

‘This is taking a year from my daughter’s life,’ the heartbroken mother said. ‘The longer this goes on, the less services that will be available to her as she approaches adulthood. At this stage, I don’t know if she’ll be alive long enough to get the help she needs. She’ll end up killing herself or someone else.’

Nicola, incidentally, was full of praise for the staff at Wexford General Hospital, who she says have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help her daughter in any way they can.

‘The staff are amazing,’ she said.

‘It’s like a family up here. They do great work with her. They come in and do things like yoga and play cards with her. All things that just help pass the day for her. They go above and beyond the call of duty. Unfortunately, she’s missing out on her education while she’s here too. We’re doing our best for her, but there’s only so much you can do. She also suffers with anxiety attachment issues, so she gets anxious when I’m away. This places massive strain on us because my other three are living with my parents. They’re very good and they look after each other, but ultimately, they’re missing their mummy too.’

Cllr George Lawlor said that, along with Labour Leader Brendan Howlin, he has been lobbying behind the scenes with the HSE on this case and, so far, they have been greeted with a complete lack of willingness to engage.

‘It makes absolutely no sense to have this young lady in surroundings that are completely unsuitable for her,’ he said.

‘As well as that, from a secondary point of view, it makes no financial sense when you look at the cost of keeping her at Wexford General. The focused treatment that this young girl requires is absolutely essential if she is going to progress. Keeping her where she is is doing the hospital no favours, and it’s certainly doing her and her family no favours.’

‘We’ve been lobbying on this for a couple of weeks,’ he continued.

‘We’ve been finding the HSE extremely difficult to deal with and to get through to. This is something that is having an absolutely dire effect on this young girl and her family.’

A spokesperson for the HSE was unavailable for comment at the time of going to print.