Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 1 June 2023
381. Deputy Cathal Crowe asked the Minister for Health the number of new insulin pump starts done in Dublin Midlands Hospital Group in people aged between 0-17 years and those aged 18 years or greater, for the years 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, in tabular form. [27048/23]
View answerIt is interesting when we have Bills where there is large amount of consensus, it often gives us the time in this House to talk about the other issues we would like to address to solve the core issue we are dealing with. I do not think we should underestimate the importance of the Bill. Deputy Catherine Murphy is right that there is always the potential for legislation to be a cheap way of looking like we are trying to solve a problem, but I do not believe that is the case in this situation. The reason I do not believe it is the case is because there is huge merit in this Bill. It is because it has come from the learnings in one of the area-based interventions we have made. We all know that communities themselves know what the solutions are to these issues. The findings of the Greentown study, led by the University of Limerick, identified how children were being groomed into criminal behaviour and the illegal drugs industry. Deputy Ó Ríordáin is spot on here. We have an opportunity in this Dáil to bring together a number of initiatives that I think have significant cross-party support. They are: the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use; the intervention by the Taoiseach to propose a child poverty unit within the Department of An Taoiseach; and the previous Taoiseach's, and programme for Government, commitment to roll out area-based interventions, or the north-east inner city model.
