Taoiseach, why can our son Pádraig not receive the care he needs here in Ireland?
ON Saturday, The Irish Daily Mail highlighted the plight of a young Irish citizen who has been forced to move to Germany to get the adequate medical attention he needs. Trinity College graduate Pádraig Schäler has severe brain injuries but his distraught parents were told he would have to wait a year to get the therapy he desperately needs. The 23-year-old’s mother Patricia O’Byrne told the Mail they are ‘outraged and furious’ at the delay. They have set up home in Hamburg, having moved there from Glasnevin. Ms O’Byrne said they feel abandoned by the State. Now, Ms O’Byrne and her husband Reinhard Schäler have penned an open letter to Taoiseach Enda Kenny looking for answers.
An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, TD Department of the Taoiseach Government Buildings Upper Merrion Street Dublin 2 A Thaoiseach, a chara,
WE are the parents of Pádraig Schäler. He is 23 years old and had just finished his studies in TCD when he went to the US on a J1 visa. On June 27, 2013, when cycling to work at 10am in the morning on a narrow country road on Cape Cod, MA, USA, he was hit by a van and left in a coma. He was brought to Cape Cod Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery. Two and a half weeks later we brought him back to Dublin in an air ambulance.
Four months later, when we discovered the waiting time to access adequate care and treatment in one of the three beds for patients in his condition in the country’s only rehabilitation hospital, Dún Laoghaire’s NRH, would be close to a year, and then only for a maximum period of three months, we decided to bring him to Germany where he could access adequate care immediately. Our decision to bring Pádraig to Germany was forced upon us, we did not do this by choice.
Broken
We were just too devastated by the thought that he would have to spend months on end in an acute care facility in Beaumont where we saw young patients in his condition acquire injuries, become infected with multi-resistant bacteria, and being denied adequate care.
None of the above will come as a surprise to you, given that Health Minister James O’Reilly, at your party’s ard fheis, described Ireland’s health system – for which you, he, and your Government are responsible – as ‘this broken health system’.
In your own address to the ard fheis, you said that you were looking forward to the publication of the White Paper on Universal Health Insurance, which will outline how you will ‘tear down the barriers’ to access. ‘So for a change, when implemented, a new health service will be ready and waiting if you and your family need it,’ you said.
As the parents of a child in a coma, or to be more precise a minimally conscious state, we can tell you that ‘this broken health system’ has not just failed our son but has also torn apart our family. It forced Pádraig out of the country he loves more than any other – away from his friends, and the language and culture he so deeply cherishes. Under your Government, the National Policy and Strategy for the Provision of Neuro-Rehabilitation Services in Ireland 2011-2015 was published. It is devoid of vision and makes disappointing reading. Despite decades of non-investment, the plan is to engage only in ‘cost-neutral’ changes over a four-year period.
The appalling lack of adequate neuro-rehabilitation care in Ireland, which has been described as ‘unethical’ and ‘grotesque’ by experts i n the field, i s well known. Over the last 15 years, Professor Orla Hardiman, Dr Áine Carroll and the Neurological Alliance of Ireland have highlighted long waiting lists and the fact that there are only seven rehabilitation consultants when we need 26.
Experts agree that treatment should be timely and individualised but for hundreds or perhaps thousands – there are no statistics – of patients, it is nonexistent.
There is no indication, none whatsoever, that your current plan – the awaited White Paper on the UHI, or the National Policy paper on neuro-rehabilitation – is going to do anything to fix ‘this broken health system’ for some of the most vulnerable young people of the nation, critically ill young people to whom you have a duty of care.
It is impossible to believe your statement that a ‘new health service will be ready and waiting if you and your family need it’. NNot for Pádraig and not for the many patients like him. (We have documented some of these cases on a website, caringfor ppadraig.org.)
Vulnerable
The Convention on the Constitution reported on February 23, 22014, that it has voted during its ninth and final meeting to afford greater constitutional protection to Economic, Social and Cultural rights, including the right to Essential Health Care.
How can you, personally and aas our Taoiseach – and, indeed, as a parent yourself – how can your Health Minister, how can your Government, allow a situation to continue where some of the most vulnerable young people of the nation are denied their essential rights to receive appropriate health care?
How can you allow a situation continue, where deeply traumatised parents, f amilies and friends have to go out and try to fundraise in an attempt to pay for essential treatment that is being denied to them by ‘this broken health system’ your Government presides over?
When will you be putting in place badly needed neuro-rehabilitation services for our sons and daughters?