Mattie McGrath Welcomes End to Punitive Hospital Charges
Mattie McGrath spoke in support of legislation to remove punitive hospital charges, welcoming the decision and stressing its relief for patients. He also criticised hospital car park clamping practices and raised concerns about private clamping firms using hospital security staff.
Legislative response
He welcomed the legislation to eliminate punitive charges, calling it a timely decision that will relieve patients who must attend hospital for ongoing care.
Impact on long-term patients
McGrath emphasised that people who attend diabetic clinics, dialysis or other regular treatments face mounting fees; hospital charges can accumulate and become financially and emotionally damaging for hardworking families.
Clamping practices at hospitals
He described the car park clamping business as disgusting and said people are being clamped while attending hospital. He criticised clamping firms that operate at hospitals and the distress this causes patients.
Effect on hospital staff and services
McGrath warned that clamping companies sometimes have hospital security accompany them to clamp and release vehicles, which removes valuable workforce from the HSE. He cited an example in Clonmel and linked the practice to pressure on A&E and ambulance services.
Overall stance
While often critical of ministers, McGrath said he supports this specific decision, underlining that patients are decent, hardworking people who appreciate hospital staff and should not face punitive charges or added stress.
We publish thousands of recordings to make Irish politics transparent and resistant to manipulation. Spotted an error? Report it — together we are building a reliable archive of Irish politics.
I too want to welcome this piece of legislation. I'm often critical of you ministers, you know, and rightly so, and indeed in my opinion anyway. This is a welcome decision to get rid of these punitive charges because as previous speakers and many others have said, they can be a long-term illness or they can be a diabetic clinic or they can go in for dialysis or go in for many, many treatments where they have to attend on a regular basis and the charges add up and mount up for, as I said, the hospital charges then as well so much for a day if you're over so many days, they can be quite punitive and quite expensive and people get sick actually and it has to get better but they get sick with the fright and the worry of trying to pay these because we're talking about people here who are genuine hardworking, decent people who would no penny and finger them on to anybody. They'd have money away for the turf delivery, they'd have money away for the milkman or whatever else and there'd be no one owed a left shot to penny and it's the kind of culture that they and that they were brought up and I want to continue in and they do appreciate the staff. Also the car park and the clamping business that goes on, it's disgusting actually. People are going to hospital and I help myself and I'm not complaining about myself, but people are clamped and while they're sat down and trying to bring people into A&E where there's no ambulance to collect them or whatever. And the fact is that the clamping companies have members of the security staff at the hospital accompanying them out to clamp and to release the clamped in as well. So they're taking away valuable workforce from the HSE. They have a contract, let them do the contract without taking out a member, which happens in Clonmel, a member of staff. Yeah.
Thank you for downloading 🙏
If you publish this material on social media, we would be very grateful if you tagged VideoParliament. It helps us reach more people and keep building a transparent archive of Irish politics.
