‘Ballyshannon Hospital future proofing care of older people’ - Minister says

Minister of State for Mental Health and Older Persons Mary Butler officially opened the new Ballyshannon Community Hospital in Ballyshannon on Friday last, at the not insignificant price tag of €36.7m.

She spent the night before in the Sandhouse Hotel in Rossnowlagh, but not before stopping at the Rory Gallagher statue in the Erne Town, to get her photo taken after admitting that she was a big fan of the Donegal born blues guitar legend.

After the official pleasantries were over and just before a number of scheduled health related meetings took place the next day, she took time out to speak with Donegal Democrat/Donegallive.ie.

A Minister in the Department of Health, she has devolved functions with a budget of €3.9 billion, the eight highest in the pecking order of spending capabilities; a budget she says has increased by 33%, after taking over the role four years ago.

“This is a fantastic day in Ballyshannon. My focus is to support older people, to age in place, to live as long as they possibly can in their own homes.

“But there comes a time for everyone that they might have to consider other options like long term residential care.

“And the residents that are here today and they are residents, they are not exactly patients. This is their home from home. This is where most of them will end their days and it has to be treated like that.

“And it’s so important that people can access long term residential care with the correct support in their own community. And my focus at the moment is to make sure that we have options for people in relation to nursing home care, public, private and voluntary.

“But the public area has only 20% of the capacity and what I am doing at the moment is build more capacity in the public area. Having a fantastic facility like this here today, with an investment of almost €37m is a vote of confidence in the area firstly.

“It is HIQA compliant which is really important but also it is future proofing our care for older people. One Of the key focuses in the last four years from me has been supporting people with dementia, 30 new cases of dementia every day.

“We have a lot of people living with dementia and people can live quite well in the community but for some they need long term residential care. They need specific nursing and they need staff that are specifically trained.

“And having eight dedicated dementia beds here is very important. They need to be in every community nursing unit the length and breadth of the country.

“We are investing heavily into older person’s support here in Donegal, for example, the new community hospital in Letterkenny is underway with 110 beds and also in relation to our day care centres.

“We are both an ageing and growing population.That has to be the focus as well. But more importantly we have the highest life expectancy in the EU as seen by the World Health Organisation. That did not happen by accident. That’s people delivering services on the ground.

“In Ireland we have great respect for our older generation. Teenagers especially have a special regard for their grandparents and their older relatives and it is great to see that.”