Aontú Deputy Leader Gemma Brolly has commented that contingency plans for the aftermath of the recent storm need to be accelerated to ensure the needs of the most vulnerable are attended to without delay.
Speaking today, Mrs Brolly said:
“The comments by Michelle O’Neill at a Stormont press conference this afternoon that contingency plans for the storm are working have simply not been replicated in areas where vulnerable people on critical care lists are without any support.
There are over 7000 registered on the critical care register for the North, many of these require access to electricity to power their medical equipment or enable treatment. We must now work to enable collaboration of services, demanding investment in generators which can be assigned through the health services for severe cases with qualified individuals to connect and disconnect these also. We must also work collaboratively across the border where possible, pooling our resources and establishing common sense solutions.
We are extremely grateful for our frontline workers working tirelessly, doing their best to restore power and water to us all, but we must do our best for them also, implementing actions now to support their work on the future.
When people living at home with dialysis machines with no power and no way to get to hospitals are living isolated in rural communities having had little to no contact from officialdom, we must do better.
We need to ensure that the most vulnerable are immediately contacted, their needs assessed and addressed as a matter of urgency”
