Cork TD assists over 4,000 people with Danny Healy Rae to travel north for eye surgery

Since Michael Collins and his fellow Rural Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae began ferrying people to the North for cataract surgery over five years ago, the Cork South West TD reckons they have helped nearly 4,000 people.

Mr Collins told The Echo that a chance encounter at the Ploughing Championships led to his inviting an expert to visit the Dáil and explain to Rural Independent TDs the procedures around patients from the Republic bypassing years-long waiting lists to access surgery in Northern Ireland.

“I pulled Danny [Healy-Rae] aside and I said, ‘Danny, c’mere, I know this is going to work, because I have people screaming at me for cataract surgery and I’m trying to get them into Cork and I can’t’. Danny said ‘I’ve the same in Kerry’.

“I said ‘I tell what we’ll do, we’ll fill the first bus and and we’ll see what happens’. That’s in late ’17, early ’18. Well, Mother of Jesus, it exploded like a bomb. The phone never stopped since,” Mr Collins said.

The service – soon dubbed “Belfast or Blind – is due to make its 114th run next Friday, and the West Cork TD says almost 4,000 people have benefitted from it.

The cost of treatment in Belfast was originally reimbursed via the EU Cross Border Directive on Healthcare, but that has since been replaced by another reimbursement scheme, the Northern Ireland Planned Healthcare Scheme.

Mr Collins said he was aware of possible competition for “Belfast or Blind”, with some private healthcare companies now helping Irish patients to use the Cross Border Directive to access state-of the art treatments across Europe, with the HSE then reimbursing most of their costs.

However, he said, foreign travel for medical procedures would not be something which would appeal to everyone.

“The people I meet, they know about all the options that are available, but they don’t want to jump on a plane, especially given the possible pressures on a plane with their eyes, but they’re all quite happy to jump on the bus and head up there in the morning and be above about twelve o’clock, consultation then around one or two, back to their hotel room, they’re free then until the next day,” Mr Collins said.

“Up again then in the morning and a taxi takes them down free to Kingsbridge Private Hospital, they have their 25-minute surgery, one hour recovery, and a coach is outside the door to bring them back to Cork.” He said he regularly picks up people from all over the county, bringing them to Dunnes Stores at Bishopscourt, from where the bus departs early in the morning for Belfast.

“I give every one of them a sheet with all of the times on their schedule, and they know what time to be at the door of the hotel for their taxi to the hospital.” Patients usually stay in the Grand Central, the Europa or the Stormont Hotel, and the price for a two-bed room is £130, breakfast included. The process through which people travel to Belfast and access surgery is fairly perfected at this stage, but sometimes things still go wrong.

“It’s a well-oiled and greased machine, and it’s very, very rare, but if anything went wrong, someone was missing, or they slept out, that whole machine could crash, because taxis, schedules, the whole shebang then goes left, right and centre, so thanks be to God 99% of the time it doesn’t, but human error happens and then you’re caught trying to change times and there’s a right hullaballoo, but in fairness they’re very good in the hospital.

The Cork South West TD says he doesn’t discriminate when people come looking for help, and not everyone travels up on the bus, he says, but they are all helped to avail of the system.

“I have people from Cork city and Mallow and from throughout the country, I had people from Galway and Offaly during the week, looking for surgery.” Everyone is helped in the right direction, he says.

“A lot of people hang in there [on waiting lists] and then all of a sudden the sight starts going down rapidly, or else the [driving] licence has to be renewed, and they’re saying ‘No, we won’t renew it because you have a cataract’, then it’s red alert, and Lord God, then they’d go through a mountain to get to Belfast.

“I have 90-year-old people saying, ‘My life is finished if I can’t drive’, the poor craythurs, so I get them booked straight away.” When Michael Collins and Danny Healy-Rae started the “Belfast or Blind” service, they thought it would run for six months at the most. With optometrists warning last week that over 42,300 people are awaiting eye care in the State, it doesn’t seem likely that the bus will be parking up any time soon.