Stephen Donnelly

They, they, they set up a, a...

I spoke to the Taoiseach at the ti- time, Leo Varadkar, and Stephen Donnelly, the minister, um, when this whole furore broke in, in September '23, and I asked for an inquiry.

I asked them to look into the surgeries of children with spina bifida over the last five years within CHI.

That's what I wanted, and they said that that was not possible.

So the first tranche of funding was half a million.

That was under Minister Stephen Donnelly, and we'll talk a little bit more about him later on.

What has that funding enabled you to do?

Yeah, we've got three primary services that we're offering at the moment to lung fibrosis patients without funding.

And we'll come to the budget 27 asks as well down the road.

Michael Dara Macaulay probably needs no introduction, although I can tell a story that perhaps everybody who I thought knew him didn't know him.

We went advocating down to the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, in the Mesian Plaza in the Department of Health.

And Michael Dara told his very compelling story.

I just don't see those politicians anymore.

Um, I don't, I don't know enough about this, but someone was saying, I think Stephen Donnelly had a very, very hard time in Irish politics, and with the media in particular.

Right.

And, um, and we're seeing now, but he got Sláinte Care through, and he got the public owning contract through, which is, I think anyone who understood the healthcare system in Ireland believed that that was impossible.

Well, sorry, I certainly thought it was impossible.

Yeah.

And we're now seeing the benefits of that, and kind of, I think I was listening to the Irish Times podcast, and they were kind of like, "Should we, do we need to revise Stephen Donnelly's, um, legacy?" Because actually [laughs] clearly he got a lot done.

And a, and a perfect example-

We would have had threats, obviously, online against Simon Harris, which had gone through the courts.

Stephen Donnelly, back in COVID as well, security around his home.

TDs, for instance, the Oireachtas.

The Oireachtas had to open up a €25,000 fund where TDs can access security like CCTV, et cetera, for their homes.

I got that right.

So the then Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, did bring in a piece of legislation called the Assisted Human Reproduction Legislation.

And that was signed by...

That's a

is the prevention piece at a population level.

When you have the disease of obesity, the treatment is surgery if it's severe and complex or the obesity treatments and the eat less, move more is important, but The analogy that got me over the line with Stephen Donnelly to finally fund obesity was the malignant melanoma analogy.

Okay.

So you get that skin cancer because you get too much energy from the sun for your genes.