asked the Minister for Health if he will consider setting up a committee to report on the conditions of the homes of tuberculosis patients under treatment in sanatoria with a view to making better houses available to them or providing them with an additional room.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Housing for Tubercular Patients.
Health authorities are aware of the housing conditions of patients undergoing treatment under local tuberculosis services and it is their responsibility to ensure that due preference is accorded families of such patients in the allocation of new houses or cottages provided by housing authorities. Furthermore, health authorities, where feasible, may supply chalets to tuberculous patients requiring segregated accommodation at home.
In the circumstances, it is not considered necessary to set up a committee as suggested by the Deputy.
Is the Minister aware that I have had considerable trouble in trying to get rooms built to cottages where three or four members of the family are undergoing sanatorium treatment? While the Minister states that the medical officer for the county is doing his job—which he is, and doing it very effectively, and allocating houses as far as possible to people who are suffering from tuberculosis—there is some delay in building rooms to cottages and houses notwithstanding. The previous Minister for Local Government, Deputy MacEntee, made a special grant for this work, but I have great difficulty in getting this work done. I can supply the Minister with plenty of evidence of grievances.
While I in no way wish to doubt the Deputy's assertion that he has a considerable amount of trouble, of course I have no knowledge of what trouble the Deputy has in relation to ensuring additional accommodation. With regard to the remainder of the Deputy's supplementary question, I appreciate that it is not always possible to build additions to houses rapidly but I can assure the Deputy that the position regarding the accommodation available for the treatment of tuberculous patients is vastly improved in comparison with the position that existed before 1948.
I did not deal at all with the treatment of patients in sanatoria; I dealt with the position after they leave the sanatoria.
Has the Deputy a supplementary question to ask?
Yes. Is the Minister aware that I did not ask him about sanatorium treatment but about treatment when the patient leaves? Anything I do in that regard is not a trouble; it is a pleasure to do anything I can, but nevertheless——
The Deputy is not asking a supplementary question.
Is the Minister aware that where application is made by people for the building of extra rooms they are finding big delays in the building of the rooms? Will the Minister see that this delay is eliminated, so that families, after treatment in a sanatorium, will not have to go back to the same surroundings, in which circumstances their last case is worse than the first?
Deputies should realise that supplementaries should be short and snappy.
Sometimes they are too snappy.
Grants have been made available and the money is available for the building of additional rooms. The total amount of these grants has not been availed of. The responsibility is the responsibility of the local authority, and, so far as I am aware, the Deputy is a member of the local authority in County Dublin, where the matter should be raised.