 Gregory, it's a tough day. It's a lovely Donald Kavanaugh. He's singing even to you. Sing a pop-latte microphone to Donald Kavanaugh there. Sing it there, Donald. Go over there, Donald. Give us a blast there. Always believe in. Go on, Donald. You don't have his microphone up. Camille, congratulations yourself, Caroline, and to Greg Gold. I'm expecting to see it today. Where is it? Don't know, Caroline hasn't. He's probably haven't melted down already. Can I get a wee Gold ring or something? It's far from Gold. Camille, how was it then? It was an interesting night, good to be a part of it, like. Yeah. How did you feel? Do you know what it seemed to be? Yeah. What was it? Because I have never been writing. You surround by the best in the industry, writing your... Oh, look! Oh, gee, it's a wild heavy. Get the fork lifted. Oh, thanks, kitty. Ah, of course that is a brave weight in that. Now, tell the truth. God, there's a fine piece, isn't it? Yeah. Is it real gold, is it? No, it's not. It's like wood and plastic, yeah. It's heavy. It's heavy. Tell the truth. Did you kiss it? I didn't kiss it. I was going to kiss it, but it was lovely fur. I was hoping to see you on Friday to wish you the best. Because you were playing all cool and calm and stuff, as you do. And then I wanted to give you a bit of encouragement and stuff on Friday. Then you disappeared on me. Oh, well, sure. Wasn't that nice? One drive to Coquenae. Yeah, you were saying four and a half hours. But what about the buzz? How did you feel or what was it? Good, I haven't been at one of those things before. It was good fun, you know. Yeah. It was fun. everyone was there. Everybody was there. All the people I criticised, they were all there. All right. And then everybody's going, everybody's thinking, oh, God, they're doing it. A bunch of Caroline was keeping you right. I've got a few sides to the way he's looking. Caroline's saying, avoid table ten there now. There's your one, you had on there. No, listen, that was good. It was fine. And tell me this, these two questions have been, well, there would want to know right. What was the fashion like? Black tie. Black tie. I was walking in the front door, and just as I was walking in, a lady turned around with a bottle of drink or something in her hand. Champagne. No, it wasn't, it was like a bottle of beer or something. Turned around. Splashed. Bang straight into me, all over my tuxedo. Are you serious? Yep. I hadn't even got in the door. What do you call that fancy lacy thing? You didn't wear a dickie, but what do you call that? So then, it was a dickie, but Donald Kavanaugh says it's like something you hang in the front door at Christmas. It was like something like... It's a bit harsh from Donald. It's not like really, it's not like you don't like really, you know, you're normally a little bit more, you know. Subtle? Yeah. Did you get talking to anybody interesting? Do you know how you talk to majority people? No, not really. No. Yeah. And what did you just have to eat? I was chatting with Dave Duke from my radio. I keep bumping into him for some reason. Everywhere I go, we end up chatting. What did you have to eat? Beef? Right. The starter was tiny. There's probably salmon on the menu too, then. Was there? I think there was some fish. There wasn't salmon. Was there? Seabass. The fella says to me, do you want a starter? I says, well, what's the choice? He says, there's no choice. Do you want a starter? Yeah, I'll have that. See when your category came up, right? How did your belly feel? Honestly. Tell the truth. I wasn't really bothered. But we butterflies? No. Did you speech or anything like that? No, nothing. It's great. It's great for the station. It's great for the listeners. Good on you. And all. That was good fun and it's nice. You know what you have to do now? You've got to win another one. You've got the good work. Thanks for that. You can touch it. I did. I don't like it anymore because I didn't want it. But it's all right. All right. It is the nine to the noon show. Three minutes past nine. Apologies to Donald. I'm sure he won't mind. Now we get the nine o'clock update. Good morning again, Donald. Thank you, Greg. Good morning. The weekend saw over four people lose their lives on Irish roads. One of them in Donegal yesterday afternoon. A male motorcyclist in his 40s died following a single vehicle collision outside Lentys. The road from Frostless to Lentys remains closed as Gar thee carry out a technical examination. They're urging anyone who witnessed the collision or has dash cam footage to come forward. In Ross Common a 25 year old man was killed in a single vehicle crash near Athlete yesterday morning. Two pedestrians, a teenage boy and a man in his 40s lost their lives in separate incidents in Listdoll County Kerry and closed it on dock in County Lath. It brings the total number of people who've died on Irish roads this year to 144. GPs in Donegal are calling on the health minister to carry out an external review into the emergency department at Lettricenny University Hospital. 78 doctors have written to minister Stephen Donnelly over worsening waiting times for patients in the emergency department. They're also concerned about ambulance drop-offs at the hospital with some patients waiting hours in ambulances. They say the situation could get even worse when the winter surge hits. The Nicole GP doctor, Kieran O'Farre, says minister Donnelly needs to take action. The feeling at this stage is that the improvements that we'd like to see aren't happening and that's why we're taking this step to ask the minister to look into the situation here in Donegal. We feel that at this stage now there could be an external review. Professionals working in children's disability services are concerned they're not reporting to a manager related to their discipline. Five representative HSCP organizations say they're worried about clinical governance, risk management and the erosion of professional autonomy. They say it significantly impacts on their members' abilities to deliver services to children with disabilities. The CEO of the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists, Dr Amira Omir says it's an extremely complex area that managers need to understand. So we're asking for the chief clinical officer and the HSE to engage with the organizations to help us reintroduce discipline managers. We also want specific competencies written up around scope of practice so that people in these roles know exactly what they're required to do and also have better supervision and training for them. These are not straightforward roles. These are children with complex disabilities. Israel has formulated a third war on Islamist group Hamas after a weekend of violence that saw 1100 people killed. Militants attacked southern Israeli towns killing 260 people at a music festival. They also took dozens of hostages in response there were hundreds of strikes overnight on targets in the Gaza Strip. Skye's Dominic Waghorn is in Ashkelon. He says Israeli forces are being frank about how long this fighting is likely to last. What the Israelis say is this is a very different situation to what they've had in the past in scope and scale and that we should expect a long and hard conflict in Gaza itself. They say this is full on war. Rather cloudy this morning with some areas of mist or fog and a chance of some patchy rain or drizzle sunny spells expected to develop this afternoon warm and humid with top temperatures 18 to 21 degrees Celsius and moderate southwest breezes. Regular updates on our website. We're back with news again at 10 o'clock. So you're saying mental health difficulties can be smaller things? Yeah. Like troubled sleeping? Yeah. Or if I'm always stressed like? Yeah. Or often anxious? They're all part of your mental health. Thought those were separate? Nope. They're all connected. How do you know all this anyway? I'm not sure I've been there myself. Anxiety, ongoing stress, low mood or troubled sleeping they're all part of your mental health. Keep the connection and find support that can help at yourmentalhealth.ie from the HSE. The county's number one talk show The Nine Till Noon Show on Highland Radio. And now... Applications are now open for the Donegal. The Northwest, The Nine Till Noon Show with Greg Hughes on Highland Radio. Hello. Good morning to you. Seven minutes past nine. Monday the 9th of October 2023. Good morning to you. You're very welcome along to a brand new week of The Nine Till Noon Show. I hope your weekend was okay, obviously. I say that with very much Creasler and everyone affected by Creasler in my mind. A very poignant and important day Saturday was and I just hope as I say, we talked about in advance how difficult it was going to be for everyone who lost someone or everyone who was affected by it. But hopefully some comfort was derived and strength was found and people can continue the difficult move forward. I think everyone had Creasler in the mind at the weekend. Our lines are open for you to get involved in the conversation. Start your own one 08 660 25000 WhatsApp and text to that number 08 660 25000 or give us a call on 07 491 25000. The email is open for you right now. Comments at highlandradio.com and as always you can watch the show across our social media channels. I'll tell you a little later on, but starting with the Dairy People at Donegal News, Saturday marked the first year anniversary of the Creasler tragedy which claimed the lives of 10 people and injured 8 others gathering in their hundreds families, friends and locals met for a special memorial service adjacent to the site of the tragedy. As 10 candles flickered the reassuring words of parish priest Father John Joe Doffey filled the noiseless village where the tragedy has been a difficult journey as one can imagine a journey of mourning, a journey of healing and a journey of learning to cope particularly for those that this tragedy took 10 beautiful souls from those who were injured in body and all of us who were injured in mind on that day he said with the journey of recovery still continuing one year on Father Doffey said the duration of that journey is unknown unlike most journeys that we set out on in life in this journey of Creasler we know neither the length nor the duration of the road ahead but we know that we will travel it together today we hold in a particular way most at the forefront of our thoughts and our hearts those that suffered the pain of loneliness and all who are recovering from this tragedy and as you would expect Father John Joe Doffey just strikes the perfect tone in his words an understanding of what people have endured and are going through the Derry News this morning Derry and Straban had more children admitted to Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre than any Cancelaria in the North last year the Woodlands Centre in County Down holds young people between the ages of 10 and 17 who have committed offences Derry and Straban are the highest number of admissions to the youth jail with 44 according to official department of justice statistics Belfast was second with 34 on to the national newspapers now and a lot of coverage of the escalation of the escalation of the situation which is war now in between now or in Israel and what has happened over there Israel formally declared a state of war yesterday as the death toll from Saturday's Hamas cross border attack rose to more than 700 with more than 2000 wounded Israeli government officials confirmed that more than 100 people civilians and soldiers were seized by militants and taken to Gaza including young children and elderly civilians as the impact of Saturday's surprise attack was followed by a rising death toll Israel continued its military build up tens of thousands of reserves have received emergency call up orders but it will be days before the army is ready to launch a grand incursion into Gaza and there's a great deal of coverage of this as you can imagine but questions will really be asked of the Israeli government as to how they didn't know it was going to happen or how their world leading defense and monitoring and constant activity in the area did not pick this up it's incredibly complex and I think you can sort of see in the coverage and commentary on it that people have very differing views on that we'll talk about that a little later on of course budget 2024 just around the corner the Irish independent continues its coverage mortgage interest relief worth worth more than a thousand to home owners and the introduction of pay related unemployment payments were at the centre of the coalition budget talks last night the government leaders along with finance minister Michael McGraw and public extend expenditure minister Pascal Pascal Donahue spent last evening in government buildings debating the final elements ahead of tomorrow's announcement this included drafting a tax relief scheme for mortgage holders who have been hit with waves of interest rate hikes due to record levels of inflation you might be eligible to that if you're on a variable mortgage or a tracker mortgage I think those are the two groups that are likely to benefit from that they'll also be help for mortgage holders who are in receipt of social welfare payments through the department of social protection there were also higher level talks about introducing pay related benefits for people who lose their jobs which could see them paid 60% of the weekly salary or up to 450 euro a week for six months after they become unemployed social protection minister Heather Humphries has championed the scheme which would see graduated payments paid to the unemployed so their income does not drop off a cliff edge once they lose their jobs just some of the latest speculation surrounding the budget there on to the Irish Daily Mail now and RTE's slow approach to root and branch reform will cost the government key seats ministers fear the most recent figures on TV licenses show the slump in sales which has cost the station over 10 million euro since the Ryan Topperty payment scandal broke in July continued through September the figures show massive fall off more than 20,000 in the sale of TV licenses 45,440 in September compared to 66,281 in the same period last year the overall drop was just under a third and on some weeks was as high as 40% so Catherine Murphy vice chair of the public accounts committee warned a very large chunk of RTE's costs are now coming from the state rather than the license fee and we should be concerned of the increased level of RTE's direct dependence on the state and a senior government figure warned the station is acquiring a dangerous addiction to public monies they are like Dear Michael with the hole in the bucket the gap can never be filled and they're concerned then of course that it could have an impact then on their election chances on to the Irish Daily Mirror and a story I wonder does it surprise you? Priestless funerals are likely to become commonplace throughout Ireland before the end of the decade as lay led ceremonies become the norm that's the stark prediction from the association of Catholic priests which has warned grieving families to expect radical changes at the services they said that this is an unavoidable impact due to declining clergy numbers Father Roy Donovan a spokesperson for the group which had or has 1000 members said he believes ceremonies will be led by lay ministers and without funeral masses he believes they will be firmly established in more populated urban areas across Ireland in as little as a few years a number of diocese including Dublin have already taken the lead by introducing training programs for parishioners to ease the burden on overworked priests so that looks like it is inevitable because the number of priests is falling and it's quite an older population as well and we already know and you know in local areas to you priests are stretched across parishes now so I suppose it's not a great surprise a record 4.5 million euro was raised for motor neuron disease last year partially due to Charlie Bird's climb a broadcaster has the debilitating disease but it hasn't stopped him tackling challenges to help raise awareness and funds last year he and a team of supporters climbed Croke Patrick while others carried out walks around the country a total of 4.5 million raised last year for MND which is remarkable thanks to Charlie's sacrifices but also the generosity of the Irish public and lastly and least big brothers back I started watching it last night to see if I'd be interested and then I didn't watch it any longer because I was bored with it after about 10 minutes but it's returned to television with a barman, maker, parties, butcher and youth worker among the contestants entering the famous house the influential social experiment which sees housemates live together in a custom built home for weeks without access to the outside world in a bid to win £100,000 has opened its doors for the first time in five years. I don't see how it works in modern society if you know what I mean the stuff that people are interested in kind of can't happen anymore like they would have in the previous episodes series and I'm not saying they should don't get me wrong but it's just very interesting to see how that program oh it's not really that interesting that's the problem it potentially could be interesting to see how that program can survive in this modern world but anyway, did you watch it or are you interested let us know, I'll wait 60, 60, 25,000 and that's the line for all of your calls and comments as you know, WhatsApp you can WhatsApp a voice message to us as well and you can give us a call on 07491 25,000 at all state we provide flexible working options that make work work for you you can choose condensed working or a flexible start or finish time choose to work from home or the office whenever you want don't miss out on the moments that matter to you make work work for you search all state NI careers today the Miracle Club congratulations you can't go what do I do on my own go back to bed starring Laura Linney and then a place I swore I would never come back to Academy Award winner Kathy Bates I never hated you more than I loved you and Academy Award winner Maggie Smith you wouldn't believe there's always hope the Miracle Club in cinemas October 13th rated 12A this week at home store and more all living room throws are half price but better hurry because when all the half price living room throws are gone they're gone also all Halloween is still all half price but when all the half price Halloween ghosts and ghouls and super scary devilish decorations are gone they're definitely gone drop by your local home store and more or visit us online at homestoreandmore.ie new store now open in Prescott center Black Rock Dublin for a happy home with a high digital online skills course you'll feel a real difference I can listen to all the music I like the boss app that's coming out and it's brilliant anything you want and all is at their fingertips does small turns but they mean something learn essential online skills with simple accessible lessons at highdigital.ie or free phone 1-800-20-30-30 brought to you by Vodafone Ireland foundation and alone Vodafone together we can search iMotors.ie to visit our digital showroom with the largest selection of used cars available in the northwest we are sure to have your next car all our vehicles are pre-inspected by our train technicians and all our cars come with up to 12 months warranty visit us in Lettercanny or Malin or iMotors.ie Highland Radio time checks with Expressway travel route 32 from Lettercanny to Dublin when you book online and travel for less Expressway bringing you the time ask the time is just approaching 20 past 9 now in an unprecedented move as far as i'm aware anyway a group of 78 GPs working across our county have written to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to highlight concerns of a patient safety at Lettercanny University Hospital it calls for urgent action at the emergency department it calls for the minister and senior officials to launch an external review into the ED at LUH after GPs were left dissatisfied by the proposed scale and ambition of plans laid out by hospital management GPs said in the letter that some patients are refusing to go to the emergency department and would rather take their chances and stay at home and unfortunately that is the experience that we hear as well through these channels Dr. Podrick McGinnis is a spokesperson for the group of GP2 of course thank you very much for your time this morning Porig Good morning Greg I mean when you get a group of GPs like that coming together and wording their views in such a strong manner things are pretty desperate I would say Absolutely Greg, I suppose the first thing to say is that this is not about our clinical colleagues this is not about the great care that they're given our nursing colleagues, our medical colleagues, the rest of the staff are working hospital in extreme unsafe conditions they are treating patients in A&E today they've just come off 12 hour night shifts this is not about them this is about trying to get them the help and support that they need and that they require so it's really important to say that at the outset I suppose to wind back to why the time is now and why the GPs have come together in what is an incredibly unprecedented move Greg, back in August time on a random Tuesday in August there were 14 ambulances backed up at Lederkenny University Hospital waiting to offload their patients and as a result, there was no ambulance available for Sligo, Donegal or Lytrum that's really scary and that's really scary for us as GPs if we call an ambulance that none is going to come and we're left out in the community looking after patients a huge, huge patient safety issue and that means if my patient does a heart attack and fan it or if someone breaks a hip and glenities or a car crash in an initial there was nobody there to come and I suppose we're hearing every day from our patients over and over and over again that they get great care when they get in the door but that they're waiting in some cases 24 hours plus to see a clinician in A&E in Lederkenny in the emergency department and that's just really, really unsafe and we're no longer willing to accept it and now is the time when we're going to raise a flag and say we're going to advocate for our patients and we're going to say it's no longer good enough Yeah and it gets to a point doesn't it and we can't live in a society whereby a GP would be less inclined to refer someone to the ED in the fear that it could actually be counter-intuitive to their health you know counterproductive sorry to their health I mean I'm sure it's happening already but I mean we're going to see more of that as outlined in the letter Absolutely Greg I mean there's a morbidity and a mortality so there's a harm and a risk of death of waiting in an A&E department and so if somebody comes in to me today and they're 80 and they're frail and they have a bad chest infection and really they should be admitted frail I have to weigh up but by the risks of that person standing or sitting in A&E in a hard chair for hours and hours and then waiting in a trolley maybe for hours to be admitted I mean there's a really scary statistic where they did a huge study in the UK of NHS patients massive millions of patients in this study and it showed that actually in five hours in A&E by the way that's all of our patients they're waiting more than five hours in A&E that there's an excess death within 30 days in that patient cohort so this is a big deal patients waiting in A&E is not just an inconvenience it's a risk to their health and it's a risk to their life as well and so we have patients that are keeping at home that really should be in A&E departments but we can't because we know that leaving that frail person sitting on a chair for hours and hours we see with contact to programs like to this program and I'm sure it's the same with you families might be able to convince someone to go in once but that's it then they say I'm not going back there because of the long wait or they're not happy with the outcome of it again we're seeing more and more on this program and of course you're a GP you're going to see it in a far more regular and descriptive fashion and we're seeing more patients I mean we have this incredible situation where patients are coming in the door and the first thing out of their mouth is you're not sending me up doctor there's no way I'm doing that no I'll take my chance no give me an antibiotic no do something else and that's incredible and we don't like sending patients to A&E ever really and if you look at the statistics of the story and if you look at all the health care contacts last year in the health service about 33 million of them 29 million are in GP so we are already seeing 88% of patients in the health service is in general practice and so we sent up less than 5% of patients and at the minute we're sending up patients who yes are very sick but we're also sending up patients who we have no alternative pathway so we're sending up patients to the emergency department that actually don't really need to go to the emergency department but because of a system that's broken we have nowhere else to send them so there's patients who do not need to be admitted to hospital but cannot wait for a year to get an outpatient appointment for something that's serious and those patients should be seen in alternative pathways and when unfortunately when we try to raise those issues with the management in LUH we really did meet a brick wall with them and we have you know it's unprecedented to go to the media with this but the reason we've done that Greg really is we're not getting any satisfaction from dealing with some of the management they'll believe about getting alternative pathways for patients to be admitted to the emergency department So in layman's terms what are you calling on the health minister to do because you're going right to the top here I mean he is the the head of the head of the HSC so as I say in ways we can understand what are you calling for from him I want to say you I mean you in the 77 other GPs Yeah so the reason we went to the top Greg is that we're not getting any answers locally and we need to be a national focus on this if we're going to be treated differently in Donegal there are three main things the first thing is that we need an external review so we need somebody else who's going to come in cut through the bureaucracy of it all cut through the excuses quite frankly and someone who's going to come in and offer solutions and back that up with the resources that it needs it's no surprise to anybody that Latter County University Hospital is under in comparison to the rest of the country the second thing by far is that we need our medical assessment unit open so that has been open in the past and on an ad hoc basis sometimes it's open sometimes it's not it's not protected and I want to give an example of this Greg because I think this will make it clear to patients if you come into me today and you have a query clotting your leg right so we think you have a clotting your leg you have some symptoms of it I have no choice but to send you to A&E but it hurts the emergency department you'll find I can treat you here but you need the investigation done to confirm with a scan today or tomorrow or the next day whether or not you have clot so I have no choice but to send you to the emergency department you're going to sit there be three hours after a couple of hours then you'll sit there for maybe 24 hours to be seen then you may or may not get your scan that day and our AD colleagues are telling us the consultants are telling us that they have to admit patients to get those scans so the patient has to be admitted to take up a bed to take up nursing care as well that's what we need in loads of other hospitals across the country and across in dairy 15 minutes away that patient would be go by appointment for their scan or go by their appointment that I can arrange the GP to the medical assessment unit to get that scan in the next few days they're in and out in an hour the diagnosis is confirmed or not in an hour and that patient did not take up a bed they did not talk up A&E they did not need nursing care that's an example of 10 or 15 or 20 conditions across the country and instead our medical assessment unit is full of patients so patients who are in trolleys this morning will get admitted to the medical assessment unit not to have medical assessment but actually because the beds are needed and so in other hospitals across the country not reinventing the reel the medical assessment unit works really really well staff and we have a brilliant consultant there already he just needs a chance to do the job and he needs the beds and the ability to do it that's one thing the other thing Greg is we can't continue to do the same thing and expect a different outcome that's just insanity we have a forum with the hospital management but we're just really not getting anywhere with it and for us we need a task force of GPs, AD consultants the ambulance service, the community services community hospitals where we sit down at this rate now it needs to be once a week and find solutions to this working together and that needs to be shared by clinicians actually not by hospital management it needs to have a senior cell to represent it because the only way of doing that is to cut through some of the bureaucracy and make sure that if we're like this and we have no beds and patients are waiting for hours in October God help us for December and January because we're going to if we've no beds and no ambulances in August what's going to be like when flu comes what's it going to be like when COVID hits what's it going to be like when RSV hits later in the year and the GPs were really scared and that's what I would say we're scared of sitting on tallies and suffering for worse outcomes as a result I mean obviously there are different levels of command and management and what have you but just to try and drill down to the relationship at the moment either you as an individual or GPs as a collective have you lost faith in the management at Ledger Kenny University Hospital now I'm not asking that question looking for a head and a stick but it's it reads like you have okay and even to the point whereby you want to be discussing things with clinicians and different types of people that aren't necessarily management so to be clear do you have or do you as a collective have faith in the current management at Ledger Kenny University Hospital big statements from me Greg for sure and I think the best way of putting that is we don't have faith in them to currently fix the crisis in A&E okay so A&E is broken not you know when all the GPs met in Zoom back in August that was the word that was continuously said by everyone it is broken okay the system if your patients are waiting 24 hours in A&E to be seen then that it's broken and so the management have had lots of opportunities to fix that in reality over the last five or six or seven years and that hasn't happened so if you ask me if we have conference in the management team I'd say we don't have conference in them to fix this current situation with the emergency department and that's why we're calling for external help and this goes all the way to the top last time I interviewed Stephen Donnelly he was like well we've increased funding in there by 30 million and you're probably going to ask well where's that money going now or what's going on I mean would you expect him to take this seriously and set up a meeting or a team or whatever it might be and take this as seriously as clearly it is you know every I don't know how many GPs are in Donegal but a large large proportion of them are here and when you actually look down through the names and I would say most people listening their GPs names on this letter it really is striking so it can't be ignored really sorry for the convoluted intro there it can't be ignored by senior salta management and particularly I think the health minister well let me be clear and put your patients or my patients and your listeners on notice that if we're ignored we're taking these to the streets so if we don't get the outcome that we want and that our patients deserve and that our patients need then we will take to the streets and I guess to go back to what you're talking about you know if you bring it to the management on I or somebody from LUH they're going to give you a myriad of things that they're doing right and they're going to give which is true you know we with pathfinder we're going to give you a myriad of things that they're doing right and they're going to give which is true you know we with pathfinder which is a brilliant program we have some good innovative things there's a new building coming for part of the A&E but you know that's not going to help us this winter and you know excuses are not working here and excuses are no good to my 80 year old patient who I send up today who still will wait for 24 hours to see to see a doctor in A&E so I suppose do I think they're going to do something about it Greg we're not going to let them not and the GPs were really clear on that just to bounce in the letter and see what happens this is the first step of asking them to sit up and treat us in the same way that the rest of the country I just want to give you one I know people don't want to be on boost with staffs but this is an important one of all our ambulance services across the country we have the longest drop-off times and we already have one of the longest commute times so the average drop-off time in the A&E for emergency services is an hour and 30 minutes for juggling that's less than an hour for Galway it's 43 minutes for Balanus slow it's less than 50 minutes so we're doing something wrong in the letter and we're not getting the resources that we need and we're no longer waiting for the per-causin to be left behind powerful stuff okay well I mean obviously we'll speak to you as things move on hopefully it's in a positive way but even if it is a case of organising people we look forward to speaking to you and see what the story is there I know you're incredibly busy like all of your colleagues I really appreciate your time this morning and good morning to you Porig, thank you that's Dr. Poderick McGinnis there GP and spokesperson for the group and it's hard to put into context how important this is as you heard from Porig there it's unprecedented 78 GPs met via Zoom call and they have sent this very strongly worded letter which is available on our website to Stephen Donnelly it's C.C. Robert Watt, Tony Canavan, Colin Henry they don't have faith in the current management team to fix the problem that's there at the moment they wanted effectively a plan put in place whereby the external people brought in and also proposing things like those weekly meetings which sound you know really quite significant and important and as you heard from Porig there in the clearest possible way that if the minister doesn't act on this the GPs will lead the public out into the street on this issue which is incredibly significant I think what's your views 086625,000 086625,000 WhatsApps and texts so give us a call on 07491 25,000 Watch the show live now on YouTube, Facebook and at HighlandRadio.com The 9 til noon show is brought to you by Letter Kenny Credit Union with monster loans available up to 60,000 Euro for all occasions Visit letterkennycu.ie Take it get your ticket Arsenal, Chelsea leads Liverpool, Manchester United Spurs and more bottom games at all the goals scored don't be shy, it only takes a minute to win it It's Cabri FC's biggest football ticket giveaway ever plus thousands of other prizes to be won every game week just head to MatchTheMinute.CabriFC.com to get your match minute if a goal scored in that minute you win enter today, season C's apply Well Grace, how are you today? I'm good, I've just been down to the mid to measure Fireplaces showroom in Chrysler, they have an incredible selection of over 40 colours for kitchen work tops and guess what? For a limited time they're offering a 40% discount on any electric fire when you purchase a work top there 40% that's an amazing deal Grace Absolutely and trust me if the discount alone doesn't sway you, there are huge selection of Fireplaces stoves, wood burners, beams and stone cladding certainly will Welcome to the spa at Orchids one of Europe's largest spas at the Hollywood Hotel Bundorn Discover tranquility in our Japanese themed garden boasting seven treatment rooms, seaweed baths and a secret garden with an amazing view of the city is right outside hot tub and sauna now let me take you to the heart Bundorn where you'll find the Hollywood Hotel Span leisure centre, don't miss out on our exclusive midweek hotel specials more information at Hollywoodhotel.com Christmas Shopping just got easier with Erwin Expert Electricals Layaway Service Now Open Secure those must have gifts from Ninja, Apple, Samsung, LG for them in convenient installments that suit your budget. No stress, no rush, give smarter with Irwin, expert electrical, Letterkenny and Bonkrana. Donegal Denture Clinic, Letterkenny. Denture problems, we can help. At Donegal Denture Clinic, we customize, personalize, and tailor your dentures to suit you. Call us for a free consultation on 9-1-25-25-3. Find us at Balli Rain, Letterkenny, beside Rossum College. Medical cards, welcome. For all your denture needs, call Donegal Denture Clinic on 9-1-25-25-3. Online at DonegalDentureClinic.ie. Okay, some of your comments coming in so far this morning, our public representatives should hang their heads in shame that GPs feel they have to do this. It's a clear failing on their behalf to represent us in Dahlaren. At long last, the professionals speaking up say as a caller, no mention of the large influx of extra citizens to the county into a hospital which couldn't cope as it was. Get down to the ED there and have a look around who's in there. I'm not sure that's really the contributing factor here. This has been ongoing for quite some time. Totally agrees time. We took to the streets on this issue, says another listener. Another here, while the doctors in Donegal have spoken, the ED in Letterkenny is not fit for purpose, which asks the bigger question, is Letterkenny University Hospital fit for purpose altogether under this management time? It's changed and heads roll. Another, why when they were building the new ED, did they not also include a minor injuries unit freeing up the ED for major issues? It's crazy. And God love the staff, they're doing their best, but can they, but they're going to be burnt out by the winter months, says a listener. I don't see the sense of the hospital renovating six-bed wards to go down to four-bed wards when they're moving more and more immigrants to the country. You'd think they'd be building extensions onto the hospital. The reason for the government's attitude to everything in Donegal, read the ED, mica, infrastructure, et cetera, is the fact they've wrote off Donegal as a Sinn Féin area. Very simple. All right, that's an interesting one. OK. Right, OK. Dara Lyons is the general manager at Port Salon Golf Club. He joins us on the programme now. Thanks for joining us. Good morning to you. Good morning, Greg. How are you? I'm OK. Unfortunately, though, we're waking up on Monday morning to talk about a very important piece of life, saving equipment, disappeared. Do we know when the DFIB was taken from the site, Dara? Unfortunately, we don't know exactly. Greg, it will be checked every weekend, so we know it was there last weekend, but on last Friday evening, it would have been checked again, and we noticed that it was missing from the outside cabinet. So, yeah, we don't know exactly what day, but somewhere between Monday and Friday of last week, it's disappeared. And is the DFIB has been taken, I don't know how it was stored, is it stored like with the keypad and all? Was it taken out of that, or was the whole thing taken off the wall, or what's happened, Dara? No, so it's stored in an outside cabinet, just on the front of our clubhouse. So it used to be stored on the inside of the clubhouse, but we felt it's been in a rural area, and been looking enough to have a DFIB on site that we would leave it outside so that it is available for anybody who needs it in the local community as well. So it's not a locked box, but it's a heated, powered box that we invested in about three years ago to move it outside. So you kind of don't think it's something that somebody's going to take? No, you don't. And as you say, you know, God forbid, if someone takes ill on the course, but as well, given its location, if someone in the wider community needed access to this, that's why it's there. That's why it's a life-saving piece of equipment. Absolutely, it's very, very important for us that the people in the area as well as golfers can get access to it at any time. And well, thankfully, like we have two DFIBs on site, we actually have another one on the golf course as well, which is very important. And look, thankfully, the ambulance service in Donegal has kindly given us a replacement over the weekend. We have had a very busy weekend here, hosting a tournament. I suppose our biggest fear would have been, you know, if somebody had a need of this and we went to the cabinet and it wasn't there, it would have been a real disaster. So thankfully, that's been averted, but it's still very disappointing to find somebody who has taken it. And how difficult would it be for someone to sort of access this part of the grounds and to take it and drive off or walk off with it, Dara? This is not the type of thing that happens by accident, like? Yeah, it's not very difficult for somebody to come in and take it. Like, because we don't want it to be difficult for them if they need it, you know? It's a lit box at night. You know, it's quite obvious, you know, what it is. And, you know, it's there for all to see. Again, you would kind of want somebody to have it if they need it. So it's not difficult to access at all. Somebody could have driven up at any time. We're in the process of going through the cameras, like the actual camera would be in a blind spot. But, you know, we can see five feet from the D-feb. So, you know, the footage is with the Guardian Lovard, and they may be able to find somebody walking away with it. But, you know, it's quite a bit of footage to go through at the same time. So we are hopeful that way. I do recall having another incident like this. And as it turned out, it was taken because someone believed it was needed. And then it turned up a day or two later. Is that a possibility? Well, hopefully that's the case. You know, that's what we're hopeful of. And that's why we put it out on social media. And we're hopeful that that's the case. And if that is the case, then, you know, that's exactly what it's there for. And, you know, somebody in a panic may have needed it. And, you know, that wouldn't be there. It wouldn't be top of their list to just let us know, you know, the more important issues to deal with. If that's the case, if somebody needed it. So that would be the best outcome. And hopefully that is the case. Yeah. But you have to cover all bases. And in case there was an element to this, the Guardian have been informed that CCTV footage is there and will be gone through. So if someone has taken it for the wrong reasons, it's likely that they're going to be identified. So best to come forward now, if that is the case, if there's a criminal element to this, I think. Absolutely. OK. And fair play for having the system in place to check it there on a weekly basis, Dara. Thanks very much for that. I hope it turns up really, really soon. I really do. Hopefully, Greg. OK. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. And as Dara mentioned there, local emergency services have stepped up and replaced it in the meantime. But still, Dara Lyons, general manager there of Port Salon Golf Club. It was noticed missing on Friday, but it may have gone missing in the days leading up to that. So if you know anything about that, obviously contact the Guardian. The Golf Club will give us a call here and we can pass on any information, 08-660-25000. The 9-Tone In Show with Letter Kenny Credit Union. Simplify your debts with a debt consolidation loan from Letter Kenny Credit Union. Call us on 074-910-2126 or apply online via our app or in office today. Donuts freshly made to water are now available at Smokes and Grills in Letter Kenny. At the end of your meal, the end of the day, the end of the week, because really, there's never a bad time. 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That's Halfway House Bingo tonight at 830. Set yourself up for Slimming World success at Dunn Stores. We've got a great range of 33 Slimming World products. From sweet and sour chicken noodles for lunch to a hearty beef lasagna for dinner, all now exclusively available at Dunn Stores. Order online for delivery or find them in the frozen aisle and save with a till with a five off 25 grocery voucher. Try the Slimming World range today exclusively at Dunn Stores. Always better value. Terms and conditions of live voucher can be used on extents or grocery shop with 25 Euro or more. The range available in selected stores only. Join me, Marty Frayl, this and every Friday night from 8 for Rockin' Hits on Highland Radio in association with Arena 7 Letter Kenny. The best family entertainment complex around with bowling, laser quest, soft place center and more, visit arena7.ie. Highland Radio Weather Updates with Ireland West Airport where you can now fly daily to London Heathrow with Air Lingus and connect via Heathrow to over 80 destinations worldwide including Boston, New York and more. Okay, let's have a look at that weather forecast now and I can tell you that today, Monday, rather cloudy this morning with some areas of mist or fog of the chance of a little patchy rain or drizzle. Sunny spells are expected to develop during the afternoon, warm temperatures still up in the high teens, early 20s. Okay, we are now joined by two guests. Firstly, Patsy Fitzsimmons, head of complaints and investigations with the decision support service. Good morning to you Patsy, thanks for joining us. Good morning, Joe. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to have you with us and Helen Rochford Brennan's from Sligo and joins us as well. Good morning, Helen. Good morning. Thank you very much. No, it's our pleasure to have you. Helen, I might start with you if that's okay. You have dementia now for over 10 years, over 10 years now. Yes, I have Alzheimer's. And for me, I suppose this is really important and for people, for all people with whatever form of dementia they have, it's important that we have this decision support service because Patsy, up until now, many people were under the Lunacy Act, were back in the Victorian era. So I'm glad to see that has abolished and I'm also glad to see wards of court because people with dementia, primarily people with dementia, honestly, when you hear over and over from families that their loved ones were made wards of court. The main thing is for us that I suppose we were deprived of our liberty and we couldn't make our decisions. Now, I can make my own decisions at the moment with the support of my son. I can make everyday decisions about my life, about my state, about whatever I need. But that just isn't true for everybody, but I know that I have those supports available to me. So it's about having choices. It's about having choices. I require extra time to make choices. When I gather information, because Alzheimer's affects my processing and it also affects my short-term memory. So it's important that the decision process, I have to understand it can really help me and it helps others. And my role as an advocate is to inform people about this and be able to dementia and hope that they understand that this is a great service for them because it is. It's about our financial decisions, our healthcare decision making, our living arrangements, our legal decision making and all of that has decision makers there to help us. And we should no longer be afraid. It's important we have those decisions. It's important that we have the decisions that we are no longer restrained, either physical or chemical, as many of us have seen in care homes. We still have the capacity to make our own decisions, but we have to bear in mind that capacity will not be forever. And so we know now that the decision support service is there to help us and provide us with decision makers, to help us and support us to get decision makers. And that's, we can have a decision maker, we can have our power of attorney. A power of attorney is something that I did in the early days because my doctor recommended I have a power of attorney. A power of attorney may I add is a very painful experience for many people, but it is wonderful to do because you know that then there's somebody there that's going to ensure that all your choices are upheld. And also one other thing I want to say that the great thing about this is we can also have an advanced healthcare directive. So who wants to leave their family making decisions about their health? It is unfair of us as people with dementia. So we must take a look at having an advanced healthcare directive and putting those plans in place of what we want medically. I always say I don't want people jumping up and down and me to keep me alive. If that's what it is, you know, I think we have to make the decisions that we need to plan ahead. It's all about planning. It's about using this service now, which is a wonderful service. And believe me, we are so grateful that this has finally rolled out. Okay. Patsy. So this service is relatively new. So before we talk necessarily about, you know, what's provided through this service, what would have been the situation really prior to someone having the service to engage with? Well, yeah, thank you. I suppose what would have happened before this is that if a person was deemed to be of unsound mind, they would have been brought into wardship and the Water Courts Office and the High Court and their committee would have made decisions for them. So that has all been done away with. This new Act, the Assisted Decision Making Capacity Act, was commenced there in April of this year. So the decision support service is just about five months in operation. And as Helen says, the various tiers of support that the Act provides allows a person to consider which tier might they need right now or indeed planning ahead through making an EPA and enduring power of attorney and or an Advanced Health Care Directive. Usually the two go together. The Advanced Health Care Directive sets out your choices in relation to your medical treatment. Can you give us some examples of what you can sort of specify and at what stage of the process you might do so? You can specify any of your decisions that you may want to take in relation to your property and affairs, such as buying, selling a house, loans, how you manage your money. Perhaps you might have come into a few bobbins. You are not sure how to manage that. Most of us can manage our money day-to-day, budget day-to-day, but perhaps if there's a large amount of money has come our way unusually, how do we invest it? We may identify that we are not able to manage that on our own and therefore by appointing a legally appointed person that we know and trust, usually in our family or circle of friends that they can help us legally to acquire and obtain information and explain it to us in a way that we can understand it. So there's various tiers that are graduated depending on the level of support that we feel we need and for planning ahead, then as I said, you can set out your personal welfare or your property and affairs decisions. Those decisions encompass most decisions that we would encounter in our day-to-day lives. There are a few exemptions under the Act such as you can't appoint a decision supporter to help you make a will, to decide whether you're going to get married or to adopt a child. There are a few exemptions, but by and large the Act covers most decisions that we would need support for and may want support for. Now, of course, we've been speaking to Will again, to Helen, who has acquired the condition. But it doesn't... If someone has an intellectual disability, a mental illness, brain injury, for an example, it covers lots of different people in lots of different situations. It does indeed. It covers any person who has or feels that they can acknowledge that they have a shortcoming or identify that they have a shortcoming in their capacity. I remember a neighbour saying to me, I'm getting very forgetful. And that person, she had identified herself, this neighbour, that she needed support in trying to remember things. I mean, you don't have to set yourself up on this framework or a legally appointed decision supporter. Helen has mentioned there that she has her son who supports her with her decisions today. But there could come a time where a service like a bank or a credit union or a utility wants to engage with the account holder only. And so in those circumstances, it's very useful, it would be very useful to have a legally appointed decision supporter who can say, I'm this legally appointed supporter and I'm here to help and be in the room and obtain the information that this relevant person, as we call them, this relevant person needs at this particular point in time. So I think it's very important that you have the organisations that you mentioned and others similar to have a systems in place to recognise that as well and to make that process as streamlined as is possible. So a diagnosis is not required. But it's like you declare you have something or must you. How does that work? No, a diagnosis necessarily is not required. I mean, anybody can seek support depending on how they feel themselves. So if the lowest tier of the decision-making assistant that will help gather up information for you and explain it to you in a way that you can understand, sometimes schemes and different things that were entitled to, for example, benefits in the nursing home support scheme, for example, they're complicated. And so you may identify that you have a difficulty in trying to understand or gather up information. So you could appoint a decision-making assistant to do that for you. And they're legally entitled to contact the various services on your behalf and they'll come back and explain it to you. For the next tier, the co-decision-making agreement is a little bit more complicated. You do need to have a capacity assessment in order to make one of those arrangements. And you can get that done through your medical practitioner or through, there's a number of people that are qualified to do those capacity assessments, healthcare professionals. OK. And then the top tier is where you would go to court and the court would make an order allowing you to make decisions. And all the information is laid out on the website. Finally, Helen, is it... What is it that this brings you? Is it comfort? Is it something that you feel you don't have to worry about? Or what impact does this really have on for you? Helen, you just have to unmute yourself there if that's OK, no problem. Thank you. The joys of Alzheimer's. It's about choice. It's about my decisions. It's about my rights. It's about what I want to do. It's about me. In the past it was always about other people. But now it's about what we want. And other people made decisions for us and none other than our own families. And we've known that this abuse has been done through the years. And we want to... In that, we want to have our own choices. We want to make our decisions. And we should not be afraid to go out and ask somebody to help us with our affairs if we need somebody to go to a bank. Or if we need somebody to go to a post office with us. We should have someone we trust. It does not necessarily mean that it's a family member. It's somebody that we can trust and we can implicitly trust. OK. So it's about choices. And it's about making those choices and not leaving a legacy like we did before to our families of having to decide what we want for the rest of our lives. OK, Helen, listen. It's been lovely having you on the programme. Thank you very much indeed, Helen. I really do appreciate it. Thank you very much. Take care of yourself. That's Helen Rottford-Brennan. And just finally briefly, Patsy Fitzsimmons. If people want more information, how do they get it? Yes, indeed. They can contact us. They can send us an email at queries at decisionsupportservice.ie or they can telephone us on 01-911-9750. OK. We retain that information here for anyone that might want it. Thank you very much indeed. We'll be back with more after the news and obituary notices. Chagos encourages anyone who is considering establishing a forest to attend as important changes to the forestry grant structures have been introduced. Get your forestry questions answered. Don't miss this important forestry meeting on Wednesday the 11th of October at 7.30pm. All are welcome. More and more people are moving to rural Ireland but we're not here in Donegal for a slower pace of life. We're here because rural Ireland is alive. Brimming with ideas and energy. The only thing holding us back is slow broadband. It's cut. Pure glacial. So why wait? Imagine broadband speed gives us the freedom to connect without compromises. Imagine broadband is connecting homes and businesses in your community right now. For better service and faster broadband faster switch to imagine.ie. Imagine. Faster broadband faster. Subject to location and availability. Call in for your free curtain design and quotation at Fabric World Dairy. Grate your rates for all our Euro customers. Meet signs of country music are in the air. That's right. We're talking about the Highland Radio Hooli in sunny Saloo where you can escape the cold and enjoy the ultimate country music getaway. You don't want to miss your chance to be part of this unforgettable experience. Join us in the beautiful resort of Saloo from the 14th to the 21st of September 2024 for a week of nonstop country music and crack. What are you waiting for? Don't let the winter blues get you down. To secure your spot now at the hottest Hooli in town call 07491-1995 or email info at countrymusictours.ie The Highland Radio Hooli in Saloo. Your ticket to sun, fun and the best country music. See you there. Live on air, online and on the Highland Radio app. This is Highland Radio News. Good morning a minute past 10. Donald Kavanaugh at the news desk. On the weekend some other four people lose their lives on Irish roads. One of them in Donegal. Yesterday afternoon a male motorcyclist in his 40s died following a single vehicle collision outside Lentis. The road from Frostus to Kilrain remains closed as Garthee carry out a technical examination. They were urging anyone who witnessed the incident or has dashcam footage to come forward. In Ross Common a 25 year old man was killed in a single vehicle collision near Athletic yesterday morning and two pedestrians, a boy and a man in his 40s lost their lives in incidents in Listoul County, Kerry and close to Dundalk in County Louth over the weekend. The total number of people to die on Irish roads this year is now 144. As you've been hearing on the show, GPs in Donegal are calling on the health minister to carry out an external review into the emergency department at Lether Kenney University Hospital. 78 doctors have written to Stephen Donnelly over worsening waiting times for patients at the ED. It's been struck off times at the hospital saying patients are waiting for hours in some cases in ambulances before they can get into the hospital and that they say is before the winter surge really takes hold. GP Dr Kiran Alfari says Minister Stephen Donnelly needs to take action now. The feeling at this stage is that the improvements that we'd like to see aren't happening and that's why we've taken this step to ask the minister to look into the situation here in Donegal. We feel that at this stage now there could be an external review. Donegal County Council is being asked to prioritise the Bonnegie link in discussions with Transport Infrastructure Ireland on the implementation of the TNT project which includes roads from Lether Kenney to Manor Cunningham, Manor to Lyford and Lyford to the border linking with the A5 in Straban. Council Michael McBride will tell a meeting of Lether Kenney Milford Municipal District tomorrow that traffic in Lether Kenney is now so bad. He believes the second bridge over the swilly is the only viable solution to what's become regular serious traffic congestion. Council McBride says the implementation of new lights at the Polestar roundabout next week will simply not be enough. You know there's been a lot of lights put on and there's more lights to be turned on next week as the Polestar roundabout but you know as far as I'm concerned even when the lights are turned on I don't think it's going to have a massive impact regarding the improvement of traffic flow and Lether Kenney you know I don't think it's going to free up the town the way it needs to be. The only way it can be freed up is with the link across the swilly as we refer to it as the bondagee link. Cuts to the universal social charge are expected to be announced in tomorrow's budget. Social welfare payments are set to go up by around 15 euro a week along with the pension. The coalition leaders and the ministers for finance and public expenditure met into the early hours of the morning they're expected to iron out final outstanding issues today. Paul Hosford is politically correspondent with the Irish Examiner. He says a cut to childcare costs were expected but it won't be as high as had been hoped. From Robert Koch-Ormond's point of view he will argue that there's going to be investments in core allocations for childcare providers it's going to bring people who use childminders into the national childcare scheme so he's going to I suppose he'll be able to sell it as a massive expansion of that scheme but it probably won't go to the 25% that a lot of parents were hoping for. Professionals working in children's disability services are concerned they're not reporting to a manager to their discipline. Five representative H.S.C.P. organisations say they're worried about clinical governance, risk management and the erosion of professional autonomy. They say it significantly impacts on their members' abilities to deliver services to children with disabilities. The CEO of the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists Dr. Marie Omir says it's an extremely complex area that managers need to understand. So we're asking for the Chief Clinical Officer and the HSE to engage with the organisations to help us reintroduce discipline managers. We also want specific competencies written up around scope of practice so that people in these roles know exactly what they're required to do and also have better supervision and training for them. These are not straightforward roles. These are children with complex disabilities. Israel has formulated a third war on the group Hamas after a weekend of violence that saw 1,100 people killed. Militants attacked southern Israeli towns killing 260 at a music festival and taking dozens of hostages. In response, there have been hundreds of strikes overnight on targets in the Gaza Strip. Skye's Dominic Waghorn is in Ashkelon. He says Israeli forces are being frank about how long this fighting is likely to last. What the Israelis say is this is a very different situation to what they've had in the past in scope and scale and that we should expect a long and hard conflict in Gaza itself. They say this is full on war. When the forecast cloudy this morning with some areas of mist or fog, a chance of some patchy rain or drizzle, sunny spells though developing as we hit the afternoon it'll be warm and humid with highest temperatures of 18 to 21 degrees Celsius in moderate southwest breezes. It'll be mostly cloudy overnight with patchy rain or drizzle spreading from the west later. Rainfall will be small, a mild and humid night with lowest overnight temperatures 12 to 15 degrees Celsius in moderate southwest winds. That's Island Radio News. We're back with news again at 11 o'clock. Regular updates on our website, islandradio.com but for now, from the news team. Good morning. The epitaph notices for this Monday morning the 9th of October. The death has taken place of Mina White, 26th Muckel Hill View, Castle Durg formerly of Nocogannon convoy. Her remains are opposing at her late residence with funeral from there tomorrow afternoon half past 12 for one o'clock funeral service in Drum-Lega Presbyterian Church followed by burial in the family plot in the adjoining graveyard. Family time please from 10 o'clock tonight and before the funeral tomorrow. Family flowers only please donations in lieu to Drum-Lega Presbyterian Church Building Fund, care of any family member or Terence Matlintuk, funeral director. And the death has taken place of Mark Gallagher, Mulroy View state, Upper Carygaard funeral this morning to the church of St John the Baptist for Requiem Mass at 11 o'clock followed by interment in the adjoining cemetery. For more details regarding wakes and funerals please go to highlandradio.com Only people from the 90s will know what that sound means I can picture it now. Back when McDonald's started cracking free range eggs across the entire menu and internet dial-up was the only way to get online and a few minutes wait felt super fast and it was known as the World Wide Web Ah, the good old days It's just one of the little changes McDonald's have been constantly making to the way we source and produce our food over the years. Find out more at McDonald's.ie McDonald's, change a little, change a loss The county's number one talk show The 9 till noon show on Highland Radio And we head into the second hour of the program, good morning to you if you've just switched on, where have you been really quite a powerful conversation with GP Dr. Podrick McGinnis, 78 of them have written to the health minister and other senior members of Seattle saying that you either do something about the ED, they don't believe they have faith in the current management system to fix the problems with ED, but if you don't do something about it we are going to take to the streets and they've outlined a series of measures that are going to call the public out onto the streets as well, a really significant intervention It's going to be available for you to listen back to on our podcast, or you can rewind on YouTube if you're watching on your big screen Hi Greg, I'm delighted to hear that all the GPs in our county have written to the Minister for Health pointing out the dangerous situation in the ED at Lettriconing Hospital, no one has done anything about it, or seems no one is listening to the patient or their families this is our chance to change so I do hope the minister listens it's a matter of life or death in many cases as GPs said, cases of sepsis are being missed and is there anyone listening is there anyone listening, that's not the question I hope there is, but is there anyone listening that hasn't either themselves got a story or someone close to them has a story I don't think there's many out there that doesn't I don't think I'm doing the service or disservice if you know what I mean, I'm kind of normal and no normal people and I could list four or five stories, horror stories like let's not forget the target to see an over 75 at Lettriconing University Hospital is 12 hours that's the target, now that target's being missed quite regularly but that's it used to be 6 or 7 hours but 12 hours it's like ok if you're over 75 and you're sent to the ED the target is to have you in a bed if you need one within 12 hours sit on those hard hard chairs or in the back of an ambulance as well it's interesting that GPs are complaining about the safety and waiting times at Lettriconing ED particularly given GP clinics stop taking calls once they reach a quarter of calls this is forcing people who need GP care to go to the ED we get that and it varies from GP to GP but some are booked out for weeks and weeks and weeks in advance a caller says I know this seems trivial to some people but the seating in Lettriconing ED is totally inappropriate they're steel seats with no padding at all some people with bone problems cannot sit for long on these, I'd ask Mr Murphy whether he'd like to sit on them also the team machine is rarely working I wish these things could be addressed and it's not insignificant really we had an assurance at one point last year that cushions would be provided for the seats I'm not sure if they ever were or if they went missing but we had that was one of the insurances we were saying look this is one problem that we can do something about surely and they were ordered and then they're not there okay so whatever happened right good luck if you're playing the bingo today it's time for NCBI Bingo on Highland Radio 30 35 40 14 68 1 52 90 and finally 60 phone your claim to 9104833 before 8 tonight leaving your name, contact number and the name of the shop where you purchased your book and we'll call you back the next working day get all your NCBI Bingo information at HighlandRadio.com Welcome to the training center join us live on Tuesday from 12 at Dunnegal ETB's newest further education and training center at Business Park Road, Letterkenny Hey there folks of Letterkenny mark your calendars it's the Letterkenny Motor Show happening on Saturday the 14th of October on a pedestrianized lower main street come and explore the latest car models enjoy fun activities for the whole family and discover incredible deals that will get you on the road and stuff it's the perfect family day out and we can't wait for you to come and explore the latest car models enjoy fun activities for the whole family and discover incredible deals it's the perfect family day out and we can't wait to see you there the Letterkenny Motor Show is brought to you by the local franchised motor dealers and proudly supported by First Citizen Finance Letterkenny Chamber, Dunnegal County Council the Society of Irish Motor Industry and FPD Insurance Visit LetterkennyMotorShow.ae for more details Now a caller says that he witnessed a line of ambulances down to the round about waiting to get into the ED the week before last with people in them and when he called the hospital to try and locate his family member he was advised that he was still in an ambulance and would be for some time but then received a call from his family member to say he was in ED so the staff didn't know or don't know where the patients are a caller works in the ED department and says there is no organisation at all and all of the issues could be sorted the people in charge just put a plan in place but instead they just keep talking with nothing being done in the meantime people are dying the staff in the A and E feel that the only way is to take to the streets and the general public should be taking to the streets too until this issue is sorted well I feel we're heading towards that and a caller says there's no way they'll manage to sort the problems in the hospital when they can't even sort the car park the hospital parking is an absolute disgrace that's an issue but but I take your point in any way trivialising your view there Amanda joins us how are you Amanda? I'm Graham you had the enviable experience of being in ED or the accident and emergency for 36 hours yep when was that? August and what was like lots of people who end up in the ED for a long time they often worry more about others and you were noticing other people's experience even though you were going through a nightmare yourself Amanda what was it like how would you describe it? it was hard to watch to be honest I went on a Monday around three o'clock me and my daughter went down we sat and went out of the tree eyes and out again and I sat and I sat right I was getting later and later until the night and I says I haven't gone home like I was a few times I'd say I'm going to go home because I was just sitting there watching people there was wee girls sitting on wheelchairs and peeing but I don't know I come on to you they were on that night and the nurses come out and brought out blankets and stuff and for people to sleep sleeping it was like something you see on a fallen earthquake it was really hard to watch sleeping next morning everybody getting up folding their blankets putting them away nurses coming out to get them up and all fairness the nurses were brilliant they couldn't have done enough they came out at night with tea and toast they weren't going off for people but it was just children sitting there and the way they were crying mothers couldn't get them settled it was just snow it was awful to watch I never thought it was as bad killing them it was really bad and how did you stick it Amanda for so long I don't know I just sat there and you were sitting chatting to people and it passed the time but it was a long and I was going to go home but I'm glad I did sit because it turned out it wasn't great but just other people there was a fella that I knew was sitting beside me and he had a cut in his hand and that fella sat a few hours at he came in a few hours after me he lay on the floor with a blanket and slept I got up the next morning and I was getting a bite of tea and I says to him I says you know if you don't get up and say it to the next doctor that comes out you're going to be sitting there so we did, he got up and the door opened I says to him go now, now is your chance so we did, he went in and he says to her how long I was sitting and she says I'll see and I was called with him the next half an hour and all I had to get done was two stitches in his hand and it was 10 minutes and stayed out that's all it took I can't see why they couldn't have a wee part of the DNA for that like people with men are caught through that need stitches to shove and then another part for older people and children because it's just a disgrace in this DNA to see it like I'm just being honest I'm not asking anything personal so please don't think I am but one of you had to be admitted to the hospital after the 36 hours I don't know I went on and the first doctor diagnosed me well I thought it was something different but then the other doctor came out and I had to go for CT scan so I went for it and he came out and told me I had to stay and to be honest because I thought I know what he told me it wasn't great but I thought oh what have I now putting on on fairness well I had to stay down on day services for one of the days because there were no arts and you know the beds down there like they're not the most comfortable but up in the nurses were absolutely brilliant they couldn't have done enough for me and off for everybody you know How long are you going to stick it though Amanda in the working environment the first thing that Dr McGinnis said was that this isn't about calling out the staff this is about backing them and supporting them and I've made that point in this show many a time this is not to sort of demoralise people in their work or make them we all know how difficult their job is but how long are they going to stick it for how long could any human being stick working in that environment before they have to say enough is enough and stick it not for a second no I don't know if you stand and watch them the nurses and I don't know how they're doing it you know they absolutely need they don't get enough praise they don't get enough weight because I don't know how they're doing it you know and only for them it's only for the nurses and the staff I think it would be a lot worse to be truthful okay that's just a disgrace and you would dread I presume Amanda if God forbid you're in good health but if your GP says right I'm going to have to send you down to the ED after that experience you would dread it no I definitely couldn't do it I definitely couldn't do it if I had a and if somebody belonged to me I would do it but I think it's because I said my family was just keeping people talking to people and older people and I sort of lifted everybody and the waiting room was very supportive of one another and I think that's the reason all right well lovely to speak to you Amanda hope you're feeling a bit better now and thanks very much for helping us to understand exactly what the GPs are talking about there from a first hand perspective have a lovely day Amanda lovely great thank you take care of yourself thanks so much indeed I can't wait 60 25000 people are calling and people are messaging across various platforms with their stories their experiences my husband went into hospital last Sunday night in an ambulance with a head injury and broken ribs he sat all night until 12 the next day and just left and went to his own GP it wasn't busy at all that night but it's a disgrace so in with a head injury broken ribs sat right through to 12 o'clock the next day and left and we have some of the highest rates of people some of the highest rates of people leaving without being seen all right okay we're going to take a very short break Wednesday the hump of the week you've been really good so why not treat yourself by stopping off at Kelly's diner with loads of parking you can take a seat and get served in a friendly relaxed atmosphere and all day breakfast some lunch maybe just a sandwich the menu is packed with tasty favourites brighten up your week with a stop off at the award winning Kelly's diner mountaintop letter Kenny 15th of October concerts featuring Thomas Drain Paula and Melanie Hewton and the amazing Frankie Gavin tickets on event bride or pay at the door check out fool brogerman facebook or log on to shimmersgrantweekend.com club money 13th to the 15th of October is the place to be dunny gold denture clinic letter Kenny denture problems we can help at dunny gold denture clinic we customise, personalise on 9 1 25 25 3 find us at ballet rain letter Kenny beside rossin college medical cards welcome for all your denture needs called dunny gold denture clinic on 9 1 25 25 3 online at dunnygoldentureclinic.ie for the biggest names into perfume and aftershaves visit niggie's chemist letter Kenny dolce and gabbana carolina herrera me too and burberry ariana grande vera wine and many more from timeless classics to celebrity favourites there's a perfume or aftershave for everyone at the geesechemist letter Kenny and online at the geese.ie an emotion stirred an idea accelerated that's progress you can feel and the very definition of the Audi 241 range from the sporty iconic Audi A4 and the all-electric Audi Q4 e-tron to the pioneering Audi Q8 e-tron offering greater range than you can even imagine test drive the Audi 241 range at an Audi dealer near you today you know the story don't you cancels up and down the country have their monthly meetings and the cancels bring forward motions or questions to address issues and we had Councillor Dermott Lacey from the Labour Party who was contacted by a concerned resident who didn't have some nice things to say especially when we got involved he described an area they described an area as being knee-deep in rat feast dentures people from Donegal it was a question on the agenda for the upcoming South East Area Matters Committee of Dublin City Council Dermott Lacey is with us good morning to you Councillor so how did this happen should we start with the groveling apologies or should we get to them in a bit well it's very clear Greg first of all the words were mine and I did apologise for including the main question that I tabled to the area committee I mean I'm somebody who visits Donegal regularly my brother lives in Donegal but it was my responsibility to ensure that the text I submitted was proper what happened was I got a very long email if I remember correctly it was about three pages long that wasn't the only offensive comment in the email and I edited out what I saw was all of the offensive bits both left in one base in error and for that I obviously apologise it shouldn't have happened I shouldn't have included this I didn't intend to include this but I did so reading it all together would appear that was an offensive comment made and obviously that was not my intention of course I apologise and is there an issue at beggars bush court do you believe this resident has a point albeit no need for the nasty language I don't think he has a case in relation to Donegal people but I think there is a bit of dirt there there's a lot of pieces there and it should be cleaned up and that's my only intention of submitting the question was to have the area cleaned up but the email came to me and it was my responsibility to deal with it it was quite an extraordinary email and not going to go into an email from a private citizen to me it's a public representative but when I saw it I said look there's an issue in there about cleansing but the language and some of the references made about various pencil staff and so forth were not acceptable and as I said I tried to add everything that I thought was offensive but left in that and apologies to all of the people in Donegal that's alright okay and you haven't been cancelled or anything have you right well I suppose if I haven't been cancelled after 31 years of fairly forthright views as a councillor maybe I'll stay there for a while more is there a big Donegal population in Baggers Bushcourt I don't know to be honest with you but there's a good population of Donegal people and in Dublin I've served with former councillor Michael Connan indeed a Lord Mayor for a Lord Mayor in Dublin I currently serve with local councillor Danny Byrne who's also from Donegal So Donegal has played a constructive role in Dublin City Council and long may continue to do so Alright listen thanks very much for joining us we appreciate it Dermot take care of yourself Good to talk to you Bye bye that's Dermot Lacey of the Labour Party and as I say in that documentation or that email he received from a listener he described that area of Dublin Baggers Bushcourt as being knee deep dentures people from Donegal which is not very nice company for us to keep but anyway it was an oversight from the councillor and there's an awful lot worse going on in the world isn't there than that but still there you go Well spoken Dr McGinnis thank you Greg for giving this time to be heard I've been waiting for I've been waiting for a development like that I didn't anticipate it or expect it but I've been waiting for it because you try and spotlight and highlight these issues and many people do I'm not saying it's me but many people do and you get frustrated because it feels like no one's listening or no one cares so a very patience I'm sure they'll feel a very positive intervention by the GPs there about time this was brought forward says a listener fair play to the GPs for speaking up for far too long the hospital in letter Kenny has been punching above its weight go down the road to Sligo to see what staff they have in the hospital in order it should be done to see how fair it is we are the poor cousin to Sligo in every department hi Greg I've been a St Union supporter all of my life and was up at the game yesterday but I have to say congratulations to Martin Regan and Neve Connell he's the fairest and best manager of this country has seen at club level that comes in from Noel very gracious Noel I think some St Union's fans may be a little bit frustrated that perhaps maybe the team could have gone for a bit I don't know but you know who will know Brendan Deveney who is going to join us after 11 and we're going to run through the weekends GA action if you're at any of the games have any comments on any old games or questions for Brendan get them into us so wait 60 25,000 and we can have that conversation after 11 not just the seniors either any other games and there's big weekends coming up next weekend every weekend it seems there's a another cracking match to look forward to finally before the break here I'm texting about the long waiting list for driving test in Donegal we live in a show with a very poor public bus service my daughter has all her lessons completed and applied for her test back in the middle of August she was given a time that she will get an invitation to do the test April 2024 which has since been pushed to May 2024 that's a waiting time of nine months this is absolutely ridiculous she has work experience for college in February 24 was I was hoping to have her license for this as there'll be no bus covering the route in the morning or evening leaving me as her mother having to drive her there and back again it is a an awful situation there's just no doubt about that and you know that date could slip again because dependent on the winter or people taking holidays there could be an awful lot of cancellations over the Christmas I got someone was invited to apply for their test on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve do you know what I mean it's automated so it may well be that she doesn't even get the invitation in April next year but it's really terrible she's sitting there ready to go all the lessons done and a nine month wait to sit your driving test they we need to do our bit of course you know to make sure roads are safe and we got around and all that kind of stuff but the state the arms of the state need to step up really and let people when they're fit to drive be able to drive especially in a county that has hit and miss public transport the 9th old news show is brought to you by letter Kenny credit union offering low-rate car loans with fast approval apply online at letterkennycu.ie or in office today me the for unbelievable value head to Aldi this Halloween with pumpkins in store now from one 29 children's Halloween costumes only 699 in store first of October from 79 cents and devilish Halloween decorations from $1.99 in store the 1st of October. So if you want to conjure up something really wicked, it's got to be Aldi, Ireland's most reputable supermarket. GiveBlood.ie know we can count on you, our community of blood donors, to be there for others in their hour of need. Blood donors from KiliBeg should attend the clinic in the Tara Hotel in KiliBegs on Monday 9th of October and donors from Donegal and Dunlow should attend the clinic in the Abbey Hotel in Donegal Town from Tuesday 10th to Thursday 12th. Making an appointment is recommended. So call 1-800-731-137 or visit our website to book your time. New donors are vital. Visit GiveBlood.ie to check eligibility and clinic details because we count on you. The eagerly anticipated brand new production of the Broadway smash hit musical Sister Act is on its way to the Borg-Gash Energy Theatre in Dublin. Join Highland Radio as we make way to this unforgettable show on Friday 23rd of February 2024. Your trip includes luxury transfers, bed and breakfast at the Four Star City North Hotel in Dublin, your ticket to the show and a shopping trip to Dublin City Centre. For more information, call Highland Radio on 07491-25000 or visit highlandradio.com. You can now fly daily to London Heathrow with Air Lingus and connect via Heathrow to over 80 destinations worldwide including Boston, New York and more. OK, so let's have a look at the weather forecast now. Rather cloudy this morning with some areas of mist or fog and the chance of a little patchy rain or drizzle, though that's clearing out this stage to leave sunny spells developing through the afternoon warm and humid with highest temperatures of 18 to 21 degrees in moderate southwest breezes. Now, I hope we can say hello to Megida. Are you there, Megida? Yeah, good morning. Good morning. You are a Palestinian activist from Gaza, now living in Bonkrana and we're speaking in the context of an incredible loss of life over the weekend in this unpredicted onyx... No one knew it was going to happen other than those behind it. These events on Saturday. I'm struggling here because I want to be careful how I phrase this to you because I know that you're probably conscious that now the media are talking about this, but where have the media perhaps been for the last number of decades when your people were experiencing what they're experiencing? So I understand it's a very delicate topic, Megida. Yeah, it is really tragedy now in the moment. It is high tragedy and normal, but it is normal in Palestine. They get attacked all the time. They're bombing all the time. They kill them all the time. But unfortunately, the people, they are, like, left unblind about what is going on in Palestine. It is really funny that when they ask you what is normal, what is going on, it is, of course, it's not normal. It's going on since 1948 until now. The Nakba in Palestine never end and never stop, but the people, they get bored and they normalize what is going on. I hope that will take a place now and we've got everything clear about our dignity and about our case to be clear and hold the word that we are not gave up and we are not forgetting our right in our land. So the fighting now, it is clear and that our land and we bought all our lives to get it back. I understand exactly why this action was taken, but as someone who I don't have a personal interest like you might have, shooting at people at a concert and taking children hostage, older people hostage, people with dementia being photographed, holding weapons, is that going to help the cause? Do you believe that that's justifiable given everything that's gone on before, Mejida, or do you think that tactically this was the wrong move? Sorry, but why it is? No one talk about the Palestinian who get killed, about the children's chocom point. What about the destroyed in the hospital with everyone inside? What about the school bombing and all of them inside? What about the ambulance who shooting and bombing in the chocom point or leave the people who want to just get murdered for the hospital? No one talk about them. No, I'm sorry. We are all here. So that answers the question given what Palestinians have been through and the atrocities that have been delivered on to them, then this action at the weekend you believe was justifiable or is justifiable. It is okay. It's okay for me because I lost a lot of my family. And we lost our land. We lost our right. And no one talk about it. We are invisible for the world and Israel only visible for everyone. Of course, it is normal. It is normal because we live all our life like that. Yeah, the thing is, this seems to have rallied support behind the Israeli leadership and they are incredibly well equipped and have declared an all out war and perhaps have enough international backing now to do whatever they see fit to do. How worrying is that for you? I worried about my family and of course I care what is going on. It is not easy to lose people. It is not easy to lose family. It is not easy to destroy houses or hospitals or schools or lands or even trees. Everything is really a matter for me. But I cannot just ignore that for the people what are thinking about us. What do you think happens next? We will continue. We will continue until the last person in Palestine and hold the war. We will fight very strong to take all our land from the river to the sea. And do you believe you can be successful in that? And if so, how? We will find a way. We will find a way. In a way or another, we will do it. I know everyone like in all the countries they support in Israel to support them with money or weapons. We will find friends in the end and hold the history. That is always the reality will be in the ground. Not only what they are publishing in the media, what they are telling the people about what is going on. We also have friends. We have ourselves, first of all. How worried are you for your country people? 100 percent. 100 percent. Because I trust my Palestinian people, our Palestinian faith about our Palestinian case and our Palestinian land. Also, I believe in Allah. He will support us. Not only as Muslims, but as a Jewish also, as a Christian who live and believe in freedom of Palestine. I believe in all of them. They will find a way to fight very strong. But also, I believe that the correct things and the correct war, it will come in the time. Well, thank you for your time this morning. I do appreciate it. That is Mejida Ali there, who is a Palestinian activist from Gaza now living in Bunkrana. As I say, it is an incredible sad loss of life and just more of it to come. We are seeing what is happening in primarily East Ukraine. And now this hundreds and hundreds of people perishing. As I say, it has just gone to continue. 08 660 25000 is the WhatsApp and text number. 08 660 25000. Give us a call in 07491 25000. A caller says, should the Palestinian flag be flown outside a public service building in Dunlop today? Just wondering what others think. That comes in from a Dunlop listener. I don't know what do you think? 08 660 25000 is the WhatsApp and text number. Right, OK, if you've been listening to this show over the last month or six weeks, you would know that we've been talking extensively about CDNT services, the lack of them, the lack of hope there is for parents and guardians to get intervention with their young people. Leonard Watson is a member of a special needs parent network and he's dropped into studio to say hello to us. Thanks, Leonard, for joining us. Morning, Greg. Obviously, we talked about this extensively. In this show, a group was formed. An awful lot of work has been going on behind the scenes. Where are we at now in terms of parents and guardians organising to say enough is enough? Greg, you had the two ladies up a couple of weeks ago who have set up the Facebook page. I'm just going to give it a shot. It's special needs parents. Any family with children or adults with special needs on that page and it's an information page. They're doing service. They're doing a lot of work, a lot of work for parents, especially each children themselves. They're doing Trojan work. What we're looking at now, Greg, it's all well and good. HSC has come back now with certain things. They have started pushing out the staffing issue, but that doesn't solve the issue now. We need services now. Some of these things are talking about it could be staff in two years, three years. That's not good for the children today. And even in our conversation with Minister Harris last week, I just thought it important to get his views on this on the record. He recognises the issues in terms of, I don't know, qualification, recognition and all that type of stuff. But the solutions, as you say, are medium to long term. We need immediate solutions now, whether it's accessing, I don't know, privates or sending people or whatever it might be. An action plan, as it felt, needs to be put in place for the immediate short term now. Greg, even some of the stuff's coming up at the moment. There's primary care at the moment. We have a parent whose child was in primary care getting regular speech therapy, and the child then was moved to CDNT and all speech therapy staff. Another family who, the nephew, has a slight speech from, again, with primary care, which all children should be equal in. But again, her child is non-verbal. He's getting absolutely nothing. And primary care seems to well staff. So again, there's a disparity here. There's no equality across the system. So that's the kind of things we're looking at. Like you say now, should it be private care? Things around key workers? Key workers should not be therapists. Therapists should be there to do their 30, 35 hours therapy a week. They shouldn't be, and they deal with other stuff that they won't train for. So we're speaking for families and children. We're also speaking for the staff and the system too, because the loss of the staff through the system is huge. The staff are leaving on their droves. And that's not helping either. There's no point of us taking two or three in and we're losing five or six. So between retirement and people just leaving the system because they're fed up, they can't cope like. So all these things is the things now, like we haven't been meeting out with the HSE in the 16th as you know. And it's the kind of things we're going to be bringing them. This just didn't happen yesterday or the day before. This has been going on for years, and the system is broken. And they now need to come and they need to fix it because these families aren't going to be quiet anymore. The likes of yourself and others have worked really, really hard in trying to get the message across, trying to get an equal, good, accessible service. And there's been successes in that, but it's different now because now we've got a collective of many, many parents. It's a much stronger, more united voice, Leonard, that's going to be much more difficult, we would hope, for the powers that be to ignore. Like I've always said, the parents, there's parents out there, they're tired, they're angry, they're frustrated, but now they have come together. And that's what we're saying about even these CDNT meetings now. We need as many families as possible to go to their local CDNT meetings and voice and show their anger, because we need to show the HSE and the politicians that this can't go on any longer. This is a tragedy, Greg. We have children with children in wheelchairs that are too small for them now. There's areas now with no OT and no physiotherapy. Who's going to measure the children for the new chairs or the new equipment? It's just unbelievable that this kind of thing's going on and we're dealing with children and vulnerable people. So the meeting that's coming up here... Sorry, can I talk about the 16th meeting? Who's in on that? Whose ears are you going to have for that and what's going to be the message at that meeting with the HSE and the 16th? Well, this is the heads of the HSE, the local politicians there who are part of the HSE. They sit on the boards of the HSE. You've got eight reps from the CD&T parents' forums, so we'll be there and we'll have another couple of parents there too if we're bringing in Joe and Lisa, if we're bringing them in, because in fairness, they speak for a cohort who we don't get. They have a lot more knowledge than us. But that's the meeting there and this is the meeting we want them to listen to. And was that meeting scheduled? Was that supposed to happen anyway? No, this was a meeting that from all this has happened now in fairness. The funds to politicians now are getting on it. They should have been here years ago. That's what I think I'll say. So the next is to start listening to the families in their area. I would tell any family that's having contact with politicians called Contact HSE. At the moment, we know HSE has been barred by now with people contacting them about servicing. This needs to happen. They need to know how bad it is out there now. Because they're talking about, and the headlines have all been flagged in the papers, that we're going to put 800 euro back in your pocket. I would refer if you would say, well actually we've secured an OT now and your child's going to be able to get the support that they need. Do you get where I'm coming from? It's not all about money for us sometimes. We need money of course and whatever, but it's services that we'd like to see some action on. That would be the real vote winner I think anyway. So that means taking place on the 16th. And the thing now is everyone's going in with their eyes wide open, all the information, they're not going to be fobbed off with stuff. I think everyone can see through the talk now. Unless there is some meaningful conversation about what can be done right now, I think it's not going to be seen as a very successful meeting. People aren't going to be prepared to accept. We're talking about a bit of work done on the panels and even they're a perfect example. I can be on the panel now. I can turn down two, three, four positions. I don't lose my place in that panel. So the panels eternally follow people maybe that are trying to pick and choose. At the end of the day, if you have a vocation to go into work and special needs, go take a job like maybe even incentivise them to come to areas like Donegal or whatever for a while to try and get the worst of them. I think it's a 55% average Donegal staff. Yeah, but you see, that's the problem. I think it's... I know there wouldn't probably not have been described as a vocation. These are professionals and they've got bills and that type of stuff, but you know, why would they come and work in a... It's a chicken and egg. If there's so few staff, why would you come here and be stretched all over the place for the same money that you might get in a better resource place in Galway or something? They need to incentivise it till we get up to a certain level and it's seen a more attractive proposition to work here. But you know, at the end of the day, Greg's staffing isn't parents' issues. This is the HSE. These are well-paid people. So now they need to get their finger out and start thinking about the people in the system. So then the CDNT meeting on Wednesday, the 18th of October, so that's Wednesday week. That's at the Mount Erigal Hotel. You're also calling people to attend that, are you? Well, any parents whose child is involved with CDNT... In Donegal North. In Donegal North. That's the meeting now on the 18th in the Mount Erigal. They tell us there's 350 families involved with CDNT. Probably is more. I'll call everyone to come to that meeting. We need a strong voice to say that we're not accepting poor services than we're for children. There's a meeting in Donegal South West on October the 17th. Now this meeting has been held on Zoom at 5 o'clock in the evening. Parents are not happy about that. It's not suitable. Greg, I've been on Zoom meetings a lot. The quietest person will not be heard. Whereas if they're in a room, they might have the courage to stand up. 5pm. This is not thinking of families with children again. People maybe trying to cook dinners at that time trying to get settled. I know parents have contacted. They've had no answers back to say why this is. That's something that should not be happening. They should be in-person meetings as much as possible. People have to be answerable. You have to face up and be answerable to this. It's also come with ideas on how we can make this service better. We shouldn't have to fix the system, but we should be part of fixing the system. Zoom is not appropriate for something so important. Absolutely not. And then Donegal East, Donegal South Sligo to be arranged. Hopefully they hear the calls about the Zoom situation. That's on tomorrow week and then the in-person meeting. Is there any advantage for people from outside the Donegal North area coming to that meeting? I'll say it's open to everyone, but they'll probably tell me it's only open to Donegal North. I'll get you understood. It's about the services in Donegal North. At the end of the day, these meetings are about information too. Going forward, hopefully we start the staffing issue. We should really tell families about what other... What have you heard about the staffing issues that's given you a little bit of hope in the meeting till long-term? We've heard now that the panels, they've swayed away from the panels. They're now doing interviews. Donegal is a special case. They're now trying to get more interviews done. Everything done quicker. Yeah, it's gone blank here. It's alright. Come here, isn't it? We can't rejoice until we start actually seeing some success, some action. It can't be a stick and plaster, Greg. We just cannot see a stick and plaster. Since all this started, things are changing a little bit. Hopefully, as I say, we have to see what's delivered, but it's clear now and can't be ignored because they're not going to go away if none of this happens. Joanne, I've heard about adverts on Facebook. I haven't actually seen them. Parents have told me. There's a specific Facebook page, apparently. Yeah, that's what I've heard of. But now somebody has told me they've actually seen it. An advert. We've seen all the disciplines being advertised. Why not? Because my wife said she's seen an ad somewhere for staff in Northern Ireland. All of the therapies was mentioned and how much they need them. I haven't actually seen it. But again, radio ads, all this type of stuff, there should be an emergency. For sure, 100%. Right, OK, so if you haven't... The meeting in the Mount Arigal Hotel, parents would be, if they're engaged with the services, the 350 they estimate, they should have received an invite to this meeting at the Mount Arigal. If they haven't contact... Actually, especially these parents, put it up on that page. Contact the self-private message if they want. Because this was an issue at the last meeting. A lot of parents came to and see who's other parents were at that meeting. Or we didn't know about this meeting. They said everybody was contacted and then not everybody was contacted. So, picture the scene. Can you imagine if there's hundreds of people in the Mount Arigal Hotel, they should be called out? Greg, that's it. The numbers is the only way to go there. We've all been single voice, we've all been fighting our own cases. Now we have to come together as one strong voice and we have to change the system. So, a couple of important dates for you, just to recap then. Donegal North, Wednesday the 18th of October at 7pm in the Mount Arigal Hotel. If you're engaged with those services, get along to that meeting is what is being said. What happens with this meeting on the 16th? Where's that taking place? That is taking place in the clanry. That meeting is only for the private meeting. But in other words, you don't have to travel down to Galway really was the motivation for the question. But we'll keep people updated as to what comes to that meeting and hopefully they come with something because of the significance of the situation. Well, that's the sort of thing Greg, this is our opportunity now for speaking for our children. As I say, encourage all parents to please come to that meeting in Mount Arigal. Again, the Donegal South West one the night before. Please go on that Zoom meeting. I know it's not perfect. Maybe they might change it now as for parents to get done. We must get in contact with them and ask the motivation for putting it on at 5 o'clock in the evening and doing it on Zoom. I'd be interested in their explanation. Okay, Leonard, unless there's anything you want to add. Well, just again, I'd like to thank you and Highland. You have highlighted this very well. Congratulations on your award. Well, were they like to you and the team here? But now listen, we have to keep the noise going because, you know, we just can't go quiet and that's the next three or four years. But we're starting to prove time and time again that when people organise themselves and use outlets like this and others, that's when we start to see change in action. And as I say, we're not cantile chickens yet because there's a long way to go on this but we're going to keep right on top of it, Leonard, and hopefully things ease for all of those people affected by the lack of services here. Well done to you, Leonard, for all the efforts you're putting in, as always, and have been for a very long time. We really do appreciate it and thanks so much for joining us and we'll chat again after that meeting on the 16th. Thanks very much, Craig. All right, back with the news shortly. This unique polymer resin construction, this decking and cladding doesn't deteriorate like natural wood and won't be beaten for durability. It also has superb slip resistance, even when wet and every board is produced using recycled materials. Live life outside with Millboard at Creative Landscaping Works listening in letter Kenny. See creativelandscapingworks.com Pays to plant trees. Planting on your farmland as part of the new forestry program could deliver real financial benefits for you today and in the years to come. You'll get guaranteed financial support, earn ongoing premium payments and take comfort in knowing there's a secure income stream. Ireland needs to increase forestry, to combat climate change, increase biodiversity, and improve our rivers. So for you, for all of us, it pays to plant trees. Explore your options at gov.ie forward slash forestry. An initiative of the Government of Ireland. Visit gov.ie on Fridays and Fridays. Okay, it's 11 o'clock. Brendan Daveney is about to join us, but first let's get a news update and it's over to Donald Kavanaugh. Thank you, Greg. Good morning. This weekend saw another four people lose their lives on Irish roads, one of them in Donegal. Yesterday afternoon, a mill motorcyclist in his forties died following a single vehicle collision outside Glenties. The road from Frostless to Kilrain remains closed this morning, as guard the continue a technical examination. They're urging anyone who witnessed the collision and signed a letter to the health minister calling for urgent action at Letterkenny University Hospital's emergency department. They've aired concerns over patient safety in the ED, particularly over timely access to service and say if there is not significant change, patients will have unacceptable wait times to access basic emergency care on today's Lang Toulon show. Fan of the GP, Dr. Robert McGinnis said it got to the point where GPs in Donegal are scared. He warned if their concerns aren't addressed, they'll take their patients to the streets. Meanwhile, Letterkenny was the third most overcrowded hospital in the country this morning. In total, 555 people nationally awaiting beds in hospitals across the country this morning. Letterkenny University Hospital had 41 admitted patients that were still awaiting beds in the hospital. University Hospital, Limerick, the worst affected with 102. Donegal County Council is being asked to prioritize the Bonnegee link in discussions with Transport Infrastructure Ireland on the implementation of the TNT project, which includes roads from Letterkenny to Manor, Manor, Cullingham to Lifford, and Lifford to the border, linking with the A5. Councilor Michael McBride will tell a meeting of Letterkenny-Milford, M.D. that traffic in Letterkenny is now so bad he believes the second bridge over the swilly is the only solution to what's become regular chronic congestion. And people may have to wait longer to say goodbye to their loved ones because of an ongoing shortage of priests. The Association of Catholic Priests says lay-led ceremonies will become more common in this country. We will continue training programs in preparations for funerals without a fully ordained priest present. And we're back with news headlines again at 12. Donegal, thank you very much indeed. All right, so you're very welcome back to the 9th Loon show, and I can't actually believe he's made it in. It's Brendan, do you have any? Hi, Brendan. Yeah, you're great. I can't believe it myself. It was a bit of a rough night, yeah? It was a little stray. Come here, we'll get the names of the people that led to stray. Thank you, yeah. We'll load them, we'll load them. Um... We'll load them, we'll load them. We'll load them, we'll load them. We'll load them, we'll load them. We'll load them. Um, Guido Sean McCools, Arshine Gallon, he is the star of the future, he's the star of now. Yeah. But who's to say what success he might bring to his club and to his county, and he'll be kicking himself and the rest of the team, too, to be on the losing side? Yeah, yeah. He was unbelievable, yeah. Speaking of the mystery of McCool Park at the Neve Connell Unions game, lovely fella, you know, along with it. Greg really, really down there, what a player for McCool's. What a, I suppose, a man to have around the club for people to look up to and aspire to. And, listen, every game, Greg just keeps doing it and doing it, and, I mean, he almost took McCool's in the county final, and, of course, there's no disrespect the rest of the team, everybody plays their part, but, I mean, when you have somebody of his talent, Jim McGinnis was there looking on, and I'm sure he's thinking, this guy is absolutely golden to have someone in our ranks as well. Of course, we're done it all coming in the next season. It's going to be massive. But it was Guido's day, and new manager delivering success. What's it, the first final in four or five years? Yeah, four or five years, I think, since the trilogy with Neve Connelly. We're also champions, and champions going into that, and they had those finals won in different games, but Neve Connell, as we know, as they've kept proving since, are never beaten until that final whistle blows, and they've come through that one. You kind of thought at that point, particularly after one and all, they had a brilliant under-21 team, you're thinking they're going to be there about every year. So they dropped off a small bit, so it's big for them to come back. Ronald McGinnis doing a brilliant job there, Francie Freeland coaching, and they're missing players, too. Quite a few players immigrated this season, so it was actually a tough season for them, so the fact of getting them there and talking about flying people back in from far-flung places, I think that's a bit of a a bit of a long shot. I know it isn't that Longo Key and Mulligan left, who's won their best forward, so it's a pity he's away now. Well, that's a possible, they're not. Greg remains, have you seen? They're going to play Neve Connell, but, you know, St. Union's fans, I don't know about the team themselves, might be kicking themselves that it's not St. Union's that's going to be contesting that final. Well, I suppose if you think about it, Neve Connell deserved to have won the game. You know, when you're playing the team, that's as well coached as them. I spoke to Martin Regan after his interviews from all the managers over the weekend, I spoke to them all, it's all up on this hide-and-redeal.com. You know, Neve Connell's so well coached they're so good at what they do, and they play a game, and yesterday they played it pretty perfectly. I mean, in terms of going forward, I mean, one-wide in the game is absolutely phenomenal shooting. I mean, Union's at 10 or 11, I think they had 11 in the match, so one-wide, you know, 12 shots, 11 points, so every time they went forward, you know, they made use of what they were doing, that their points were top-class, they've got some seasoned players in there, they don't give up the ball cheaply, and if you're going to be Union's, and to go on a side like that, your game has to be perfect, and the amount of possession Union's had yesterday, cheap possession, dropping balls, per passes, and then when they go forward, Union's is a wide count, but it was huge. People say they were under a bit of pressure for that, which is fair enough, but that side of your game has to be perfect, and Union's were far from it yesterday. Even though you've only two points in there in that game, Neve Connell went complete control in that game. There was a gear if needed. Well, you know, for me, if I'm thinking football, I think Neve Connell could have overran Union's in the second half if they'd have wanted, but they do never seem to want to do that, they just sit. Now, people at the match will say, neutrally, you know, not a great game of football. They're never exciting kind of games, they're exciting in small bits, of course. Teams are on the break or different things. It's not a great game of football, but I mean, there's Neve Connell, Seven Finals in a row, it's a break or break and stuff, they're by far. But there's more on it, on the line, next year's final defeat. Maybe that's why you'd all bowled over, but... Yeah, I think from the group game, there was a bit of a... there was a few firsts thrown at the end of that. I think that caused a bit of kickoff. It wasn't nice to see. And, you know, I think from Neve Connell's perspective, having been in that position, if you're in a semi-final and a row break, you don't want anything to do with that because you could get suspended for a final. So I think, you know, the biggest thing for them was probably trying to get rid of that first. But that, I think, came from... the group game was very... there was a lot of nastyness going on, Greg, which isn't nice to see. So there's no secret, then, really, as to how Neve Connell will set up for the final. Presumably they go in as favourites. So what has to be done? What do Guido have to do to beat this machine, then? Well, this is it, Greg. It's a thing most people haven't been able to come up with the goods in terms of going around it. If you think back to that trilogy game, Guidoer were probably one of the best Guidoer teams ever and they still, at times, looked like they were going to open up with Neve Connell hanging and hanging there. This time, Neve Connell coming on there with absolute complete confidence. Big Gav McBride went off. Guidoer fell forward the last day. The word is, he's going to miss the game, as well. So, listen, it's a huge ask. People talk about finals and things happening in finals, but not when you're as tactically set up as Neve Connell, telling not to happen. So, listen, for Guidoer on the ball, managing to open up space, and when you get inside that 45, you cannot give the ball away. You either got to get a man off the shoulder, you got to win a free, or you got to make possession that you can get a shot away, and then you got to take your chances. That's what you have to do. Even McGee's inside, if they had a big Gavin as well, there's always extra numbers there for Neve Connell if it breaks, more likely it's going to break the defender. So, this is the conundrum. You have to be very good with runners coming from deep, coming off the shoulder, movement near forward line. But, as I say, I would say, is there a better team, not only probably in Ulster, maybe in Ireland, a better team than Neve Connell at doing what they do? And that's why I say they've been so successful. Yeah, indeed. And it's going to be an interesting game. And a lot of it will be, you know, commentary, the underdogs taggle suit, you know, suit good or... Yes, it was a former player. You've been in a lot of dressing rooms, a lot of big games. You've been the favourites going into some games, the underdogs into others. Explain to me how the underdog label suits the team. Yeah, it used to be a thing from years ago. I think I go back and do a set of tactics. You know, on the day, you know people come out this wild champ, it's a bite, and they just go at the other team, you'll see a drop off maybe in performance from a team. But because Neve Connell play so tactically, you generally get a similar type of performance week in, week out, every game they play. So on the day, maybe doesn't count that much. That said, two seasons ago, I think the final at Union's won. Neve Connell didn't really turn up that day. It was very unusual performance from them. So good or a bit relying, hoping that there's maybe a bit of a drop in their performance like that. But really, Greg, this comes down to good work playing out their skin, taking every chance that they can, going forward. And the underdog tag, I know Neve Connell people say they don't like going in as favourites. That season, for example, that final I'm talking about, Neve Connell were favourites going in. And I know a few of the people remarked to me that they don't like that. But, you know, I talked to Neve Connell people before the game and after it, you know, around Bal Bafay yesterday, you know, you see the same people all the time, supporting or up about, you know, they're happy they're in a final again. And Martin Regan has interviews to say up on the site. And I was just saying about the time that he's put in and his family, the Neve Connell, I mean, it's unbelievable, you know, in terms of dedication to the club. Some questions and messages, texts coming in. Do you think that the main narrative, not by you, up until now, around the Neve Connell team has been that they were a good team, but won county semi-finals mainly through their doggedness and grit and didn't get genuine credit? Yeah, there is that argument. Greg, I think from neutral's perspective, you see, because the game isn't that exciting and has played in a certain way, it probably doesn't, it doesn't live long in the memory in terms of maybe football matches, you know, in terms of, as I said yesterday, Neve Connell I think could have won the game by far more. And the second half could have really won that because I think when they went forward, the units couldn't stop them, but they just sat and they're happy enough to win games again. So some people then maybe don't remember the games as much. I think that's probably, that's a neutral kind of narrative in it there, but I mean, I don't think, obviously it doesn't bother them, they're just happy to keep winning, that's what they're doing. Do you think we all will be dangerous in the final? They're live opposition, like? Yeah, definitely, I suppose the big one with them, Darab Will coming back from, from Haldies, I think he made a cut out a bit short as well. The SOS went out to him. He was in Bali or somewhere like that. He came back and of course, Evergreen, Eamon McGee and Neil McGee are in their backbone in the team. So they do have a good mix of experience in that and you've seen it against maybe McClells the last time. McClells is a very young team. They do a bit better on the ball, fine and range. Ethan Harkin had a great game with them, which is a big plus going on in the team. I think it had one-five. So, you know, there are a lot of plus points going on, but Greg, they're definitely going on as big underdogs. Someone said to me, and it was enough the game that you just mentioned there, but someone said it, in fact, this has been mentioned to me twice, interesting to get your views on it, that the game that, I don't know how to phrase this, that young players maybe have been held back a little bit because, you know, some stalwarts haven't hung up their boots. Right? I'm trying to phrase this carefully, right, that the progression, the younger players, the super talented younger players are not necessarily getting the chances or the progression that they possibly would because there are, you know, a few players in different teams that are hanging on. Well, do you know what, listen, if you're good enough, you used to say you're good enough, you're young enough. Sometimes you're on name and reputation. Well, you still have to put it on. Right, you know, a manager's going to pick you if you're good enough to play, regardless of age, you know, and that's the young or old. So, there probably is an aspect of that in certain teams, but if you look at people in Maron and Bournemouth talking about Neve Connellyre, I mean, Thompson and McClune and these boys just keep churning it out, Brendan McDyre and all these guys, they keep playing away, they're still contributing to the team and I'm sure Martin Regan, if he had a younger guy in there, was going to do a better job than he would be on the pitch. If the best team won well done, Neve Connellyre, Union's not playing football, too many players dictating. Do you want to comment on that? Yeah, listen, it's a difficult proposition. I often hear people saying, don't be going over and back, don't be going over and back. If you have 15 players inside the 45 and they are well coaching and they're good footballers, you have to, at times, go over and back. There is no easy method to get through a packed blanket defence and that's just how it is. State Union's must be disappointed, says another listener, they didn't know that the game was there for the winning, but there was no change in plan in the second half. Listen, there's no kind of magic formula to take this, as I was saying before, that is about trying to get in size of, trying to beat one man, trying to get an overlap, trying to get somebody in around the back. Union's did do that, the shots were coming, they just didn't go over the bar. But there was a feeling, there was still a feeling that it just wasn't going to happen. How come Union's didn't change their way from last year and practice long kicks? There was an opportunity, there would be more of an opportunity, I think, to put the ball in long, but if you look at it at the end, what was the reference to Union's day, there was an attempt to put the ball in for a possible goal chance at the end and the ball went outside the right to the goals in wide, Leo McLean just let it run past them. I thought that summed up Union's day. We couldn't even kick the ball into the five yard for a flak in and I was just getting like that, that summed up the day. Brendan Kilcoyne in Jungle Day is going to be on the show tonight with Brendan, that's the DL debate after seven to review all of the weekend's action, lot went on. And also a big weekend, next weekend junior in intermediate finals as well. Yeah, we've got interviews from the guys, it was a preview yesterday in the park, up in McLean Park upstairs and just how times changed and that I was speaking to McLean Secretary, I was like what's the story of the bar, the bar wasn't opening that he says people don't come up anymore. And I remember you're on a bit like years combined myself, there's always wild crack in the bar upstairs and that we went up for something to eat then up the road and the fella rose and there's only a few people about, a few people, I was getting a bit of a touch of course, which is fine, my wee boys run about in the Union's jersey, I said here I'm going to get too much stick, but you know, I was just saying the change in times, there was always a wild crowd about everywhere and he said people don't come up anymore, I didn't know this at all, but up there it was a bit of a preview Deck and Boner was there and a great story from Maval Pat McLean and Johnny Quigg were there, two soccer men, Quiggie would have played with me at Harps, they came on and took the Maval team, the GAA team and Quiggie's never known how to do with GAA's life and he was training with the GAA team, so it was a great story there and they finally met Narasa, Deck and Boner's Narasa and then Malin and Dowlin, so we'll talk to Kevin, Quiggie Galler and Michael Byrne, so that'll be all in the show. Do you want to call them? Difficult, difficult, Greg, wee bit of a sneak for Malin, sorry, Quiggie in the intermediate and Narasa You're not going to be launching that ball in Malin, are you? Narasa, do you want to review that? Ah, yeah, I'll listen, a bit of a white wouldn't be hard to block that slip Hey, people do get sensitive, Greg, I always be surprised at that but yeah, what are you saying about it? Anyway, so listen, the big weekends just keep coming and coming and coming, it's fantastic stuff, there's so much to go through tonight, Brendan Kilcoin Jungle Day and all the voices you'd expect to hear ahead of the next week's action, the Junior and Intermediate Finals as well for next week, it's all seven, Brendan. That's it. And it's all thanks to sister Sarah's there supporting the show. Well done, your ward, you're looking good in the old ping-pong soup boys, very much indeed. Scrum up well. See, I'm a winner, Brendan, a winner. Perfect. I'm like St. Eunice, yes. Oh, the knife's coming out, you better write the text later. Between that and hard as nails, 35 year olds defenders looking to kick the crap out of me. All right, listen, Brendan, thanks very much indeed, looking forward to that. By the way, it's live for you after seven, it's a cracking show, the deal debate. There's people from all over the county and country that listen to it because they enjoy how it, the presentation and the conversation, and also previewing next weekend's action as well. That's all with Brendan Deveney. The county's number one talk show, The Nine Till Noon Show on Highland Radio. The Nine Till Noon Show with Letter Kenny Credit Union. Simplify your debts with a debt consolidation loan from Letter Kenny Credit Union. Call us on 074 910 2126 or apply online via our app or in office today. The vaccine flow and COVID-19 let the chorus in Meenachtha and Nartow Naig Chinas Cronkushuk. Multir vaccine fluidage Matatu Shasku Kuig Noon Nishina. Multir Chendoluk Fovre COVID-19 Matatu Kwega Noon Nishina. Multrundaw vaccine Dibril Corum Slansha and Deandana Ta Gumpur Klinna no Will Rooks Slansha Fatserma Garu. Now, the doctor, Taeli, no Cogus Oren Fartok. No Cymnismo Olisawil Fekar and HSC. Get more. Pay even less. Download the Lidl Plus app now. Tap to activate your coupons and cut costs with exclusive Super Savers like Irish Carrots, now 49 Cent and Board B approved Irish Chicken Breast Fillets now 579. Just scan those Lidl Plus coupons at the till. Go on. Get more. Pay even less. Go full Lidl today. We go through a lot to connect with our family. That's why Vodafone Red Family now rewards you with a minimum of one month when you add broadband to your plan. So moments like getting the dog they desperately wanted can be more rewarding after you fed it, walked it, cleaned it, played with it, walked it, taken it to the vet and walked it again. Search Vodafone Red Family or go in store. Vodafone, together we can. The Times 1121 and we're joined on the program now by Marie Duffy, communications officer with Mental Health Ireland. Good morning, Marie. How are you? Morning, Greg. How's things? Good, good. How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? Morning, Greg. How's things? Good, good. Difficult weekend for you and for so many people for all of us, really. Obviously being a Chrysler native it's just so sad, isn't it? And it's still so sad. Yeah, I guess this was a very difficult weekend for lots of people in Chrysler and not just Chrysler, people all over Donegal. We know that we had people all over the world thinking of us this weekend and I guess for a lot of people the first anniversary is always going to be the toughest but in one way we're kind of glad that it's been marked now but of course it's still early days in people's kind of recovery. Yeah, and as I said when we have the conversation last week it's different for everyone everyone's different and everyone has their own journey and experience. Thanks for referencing that, Marie. October 10th tomorrow is World Mental Health Day but Mental Health Ireland is effectively stretching it out to Mental Health Month. Talk to us about that, Marie. Yeah, so every year October 10th is World Mental Health Day and this year and last year Mental Health Ireland have decided to extend the day to a whole month of celebration around wellbeing and mental health and raising awareness about mental health we want people talking about mental health there's often a lot of questioning around awareness months and awareness days and if they work the research tells us that they do work and they help reduce stigma they get people talking about mental health and that's what we want we want the average person having a conversation with their friends, their family, their neighbours talk about mental health and slowly chipping away at that stigma. Isn't it, Marie? Because we are making progress but we've an awful long way to go we certainly couldn't sit back now and say, right the stigma no longer exists and people are feelers free to talk about an issue with their mental health as they might a twisted ankle you know we're still a long long away from that because people will be afraid that they'll be judged by others. Yeah, we've made huge strides around mental health stigma over the past few years but we have a very long way to go and we know that people are still scared to talk to their friends, their family about their mental health. We know that they're afraid to come out in their workplaces and speak to managers and about mental health about mental illness, about anything like that we are getting better and even the small conversations really help. I know a lot of people think well I'm only one person what can I do but even just sharing the message tomorrow on your social media throughout the month of October every little conversation does help and as I said it's about chipping away we won't do it all tomorrow or even this month but if we make a small start it's something. Yeah and also too it's about maintaining our mental health or recognising if we have a mental health issue that's impacting on our lives but we just expect it accepted as the norm because what we've noticed and we've seen it with rural isolation and the whole country saw it through lockdown exactly what that's like even just talking using this month to I don't know reignite friendships or to reach out to someone in a way that's your part of mental health awareness because you might be helping them and maintain their good mental health or yourself, do you know what I mean so it's not always necessarily someone who is in a very who's suffering badly with the mental health reaching out that's incredibly important but it's about maintaining it and looking after ourselves as best we can. Yeah I suppose when we talk about mental health we talk about all the aspects of mental health so that's the good, the bad in between it's really about well-being unfortunately we only seem to talk about mental health when it comes to mental illness but it's a bit like maintaining your fitness, your physical health it is something that you need to work on every day and it's about staying well, it's much easier to stay well and put those little efforts in every day we work on the principle of the five ways to well-being and they're five very simple practical things that you can do every day to maintain your well-being and as you said connections a huge one it doesn't have to be going out on a weekend with your friends that's not for everybody it could be as simple as meeting up for a coffee sending someone a text in this day and age we often feel that we need a reason to meet up with someone we need a reason to reach out just send that text I guarantee that your friends or whoever you're texting will be delighted to hear from you and I suppose the other few things around the well-being five ways for well-being is being active we know that being active is extremely good for your mental health and that doesn't mean climbing muckish or aerugal it means going out for the 10 minute walk we're very lucky in Donegal that we have lots of beautiful nature go to the local beach go to the forest get out, you don't have to walk miles cleaning the house, little things more movement there's loads of things that we can do and there's loads of stuff out there as well and obviously I recognise it can depend on people's mobility or access to transport but when we talk about things like this we get contacts from I don't know, men's sheds where they're so welcoming and you just call in and there's no inquisition, you just go in and you join up and you enjoy it, there's walking groups there's poetry groups, there's art there's something for everyone out there and you might actually be surprised it's very close to you in your area so just talking to that point about interacting with people, maybe the local pub and post office has closed but there is other stuff there if you just take that first step and see what local groups or organisations are in your area and build your friendships and relationships that way you're also as an organisation obviously celebrating what we're good at which is helping each other so we generally are there to take that hand and to help them but also to keep the pressure on the powers that be to ensure that when someone does look for some support that those supports are there there's many aspects to this month-long campaign Marie Yes so we've got lots of things going on we are launching a booklet for women on the menopause and how that impacts on people's mental health we don't talk enough about things like that but it affects so many women as well indirectly impacted we're working with workplaces we have a free e-learning module that is for managers and workplaces around embedding mental health and wellbeing into your workplace we've got events all over the country and just sharing messages on social media you don't need to necessarily go to like if you're struggling to reach out like as you said the men shed I'm pretty sure most people don't talk about their mental health at the men shed but it's hugely beneficial for their mental health we're not necessarily go out and tell them people that you have to focus solely on the conversation of mental health connecting no matter what you talk about is beneficial getting active, taking up a hobby joining your local community group volunteering looking after your mental health and you don't necessarily you're probably already doing it and you don't realise and I guess for us we want looking after your mental health to be as natural as brushing your teeth in the morning something that you do without thinking and we're getting there but we still have a long way to go there's loads of resources and information on the website worldmentalhealthmonth.ie plenty of resources there on the mental health Ireland's website it is indeed and as I say lots of little things can have that ripple effect and you know just get us to a better place get everyone to a better place Marie as much as is possible you understand what I'm saying yeah exactly we've a few events coming up happening over the month in Donegal go on talk to us about them go through them okay so we have our development officer Bill Vaughn who will be heading out to Arnmore tomorrow to talk to the people out there about health and well-being and how they can mind their mental health on the 12th October he will be going to Tory Islands so we're getting all the islands in on the 12th October we also have events that's being held by the intercultural platform for migrant men that's on the 12th October in Trinity Hall and then on the 22nd of October I'll be holding a fundraising walk for mental health Ireland on the Muckish Railway Walk just outside of Priestla and everyone is welcome to come along to that we'll have lots of information about mental health on the day we're going to be connecting with each other walking in nature and just getting a bit of fresh air lovely sounds great okay Marie thanks very much for your time this morning I do appreciate it and have a wonderful day thank you Greg bye bye Marie Duffy there communications officer with Mental Health Ireland watch the show live now on YouTube, Facebook and at highlandradio.com the 90 noon show with Letter Kenny Credit Union now offering mortgages from 40,000 to 600,000 euro with no hidden fees or transaction charges Letter Kenny Credit Union 9102127 Optimus here and so are the new arrivals at Green's Shoes shop and store or online now from top brands like Doc Martens Kate Appleby, Tommy Bow and Riker from The Netherlands Wonders, Echo and many more Shop LK and one for all gift cards accepted in store Visit Green's Shoes 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Then we will see you at the checkout. Hi folks, Paul McDevill here. I invite and enjoy myself and Jimmy Stafford this Monday night for another edition of the Monday Night Sessions. On the show this week we welcome the brilliant Belfast singer-songwriter Jobby Fox. Also in the programme we give a massive welcome from Lifford to Brendan and Jimmy Maxwell. Plus we'll also be playing you some of the latest new releases from the North West and around the country. So that's the Monday Night Sessions. This Monday Night between 8pm and 10pm right here on Highland Radio. Now, LGBT Ireland have launched a new campaign aimed at empowering, supporting LGBTQI plus people in Donegal ahead of national coming out day which is on Wednesday the 11th of October. It's entitled Empowering Anthems. Adam McBride is Head of Services and Engagement Programs at LGBT Ireland. Good morning to you Adam. Good morning Greg. How are you getting on? I'm very well. Thanks. How are you? Good, good, good. Talk to us about national coming out day and its importance of stroke significance. So national coming out day celebrates the experience of coming out for members of the LGBTQI plus community. So coming out can be very difficult. It can be a very stressful time for people. There's always that fear of rejection but there's also very positive elements of coming out where people feel like they can feel very empowered and that they've taken ownership of their own life. So it's kind of celebrating that but also to raise awareness of the difficulties that can face members of the community in coming out and I suppose to let them know that we're there. Are we moving forward progressing or is there some regression now for members of the community? Ireland definitely was moving forward and progressing very well around human rights and also just around the kind of felt sense of being safe to I suppose walk down the street holding hands with your partner. In recent years that we have definitely seen some bit of a regression around it. My colleague, poor Reg Rice, our head of policy delivered a dress to Iraq to the Iraq just recently in relation to the year of hate of 2022. So there was a lot of hate crimes against members of our community in 2022, some of which obviously were very extreme and have definitely had an effect on the community and how we feel in relation to safety. Yeah and some of them too are it's kind of peculiar in that communities aren't even almost able to grieve as some of these and particularly their horrific murders end up being weaponized in some way or other you know in pitching certain groups against others. It's a strange space we've found ourselves in if you understand what I'm trying to say sensitively Adam. Yes we've definitely found ourselves I think in a place where certain members of our community and certain people within our community are being used I suppose to try and fit us against each other which of course we don't we don't want and the community as a whole stands firm together. So yes it is very difficult to I suppose negotiate some of that. Yeah now what is the how do people engage with this particularly on the social media the hashtag and all that type of stuff tell us about that. But the idea of this is to ask people so we know that music is really important to a lot of people and we're asking allies and members of our community to select their empowering anthem so something that makes them feel good makes them feel motivated and empowered and to share it on social media with the hashtag empowering anthems. So we've got a couple of different well-known personalities who have been engaged in it so far so that includes Brendan Courtney Shane Daniel Burn and Sonja Lennon and we just like people to share their song and make a donation to LGBT Ireland and share it across Instagram, Twitter, any other social media, sorry I had the Twitter egg and maybe not there it may be not there yes maybe not there these days. Yes no it is important that that that people don't retreat know it but you know yourself the way it is nowadays okay so you hashtag empowering anthems posted across your social media I think also it's important that others support as well as part of it be to share or like or whatever it might be even if it's not something you feel directly affects you because there's a bit of solidarity in there as well. Definitely yes like our allies are so important to us and we really appreciate everything they do for us like we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for our allies so we really appreciate and respect them and within Ireland I think majority of Irish people are very supportive. So for a very good reason because a lot of people have a member of the LGBTQI plus community within their family you know so that's the majority of the truth be told not the minority have you picked your anthem yet? I have yes but it's a very old-fashioned one I haven't shared it yet but yes. Do you want to save it for Wednesday? Yes something like that. You're not going to do that. It's Scarlett's independent love song so I'm Scarlett playing us but yes that was that was always my anthem when I was growing up. You have to own it. You have to own it yeah I know. Comparing anthems. Okay exactly and there's a story lots of people have a story to accompany their choice and we look forward to listening to yours on Wednesday so you can get more information where Adam? So you can get more information on LGBT Ireland's website so that's lgbt.ie and on our Facebook and Instagram pages you can also if somebody is looking to contact our services because they need to talk or they need support they can call our national helpline which is 1-800-929-539 and that's open the evenings and from four to six both weekend days so if that's if anyone wants to contact us for support or just need to talk to someone so that's an active listening service. Brilliant stuff all right thanks so much for joining us I really do appreciate your time and have a wonderful day. That's great thank you Greg. Take care of yourself bye bye. Thanks. That is Adam McBride head of services and engagement program at lgbt. Ireland talking ahead of national coming out which is on Wednesday the 11th of December a big thank you to our friends over at Kelly's they sent over a lovely hamper they always do beautiful things but when I'm on air and I can smell croissants and the curly yolks and I can't eat them because I've tried to eat one before during an hour break and it doesn't work and I hope there's going to be some left at the time I'm finished but we really do appreciate the gesture thank you so very much indeed to all the crew over at Kelly's and thank you all for keeping us so busy on the phone lines lots of big stories today not least that letter issued from gps to the health minister as it relates to their concerns over services at letter county university hospital you've been having your say in that regard as well which is hugely important as you know we'll get to some of those and more before the end of the program. 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Highland Radio Weather Updates with Ireland West Airport, where you can now fly daily to London Heathrow with Air Lingus and connect via Heathrow to over 80 destinations worldwide, including Boston, New York and more. Sunny spells are expected to develop during this afternoon with high temperatures of 18 to 21 degrees in moderate southwest breezes, mostly cloudy overnight with patchy rain or drizzle spreading from the west. Ri, the hospital, I think it's a disgrace that people with serious mental health issues who've been admitted to the mental health unit on numerous occasions still have to go through the ED first. I know someone like this who was sent home from the ED in a terrible state. They didn't check their history, only have to go again a week later because of a worsening in their condition. If anything would have happened to them in that week, the hospital would have had to be held responsible. Another one about the people that come in with alcohol and drugs at the weekend. Never hear that mention, Greg, on a regular basis. Security can't cope, not enough of them on. Guardi can't always get up to the hospital when fights break out, especially at the weekends. It's the reason you wouldn't... We've discussed it on this programme, but the reason you might not hear it as much is because we sort of are driven sometimes by what the listeners say. They're not aware of what the hospital was in and they witnessed that, they come on, they talk to us. But I can tell you, it's certainly not something that's being suppressed in terms of talking about, just to be absolutely clear. Right, Jerry McMonagall is a member of Regional Health 4 and one of the Donagall reps on that. Jerry, good morning to you. Good morning to you. I mean, it's hard to put into words how significant I think this intervention from 78 GPs in this county is, but it is significant. Look, I very much welcome their intervention and I fully support the call for the minister to meet with them and Anselda to discuss their serious concerns and the concerns that we've been raising for quite a while now. The ongoing crisis at the emergency department is totally unacceptable and I know and I have to say that the staff are trying their very, very best, but all the different pathways and the rejections that they're making are not working great and I'm really pleased to see that the GPs now are taking a stand on this. I mean, when you see what they're saying, is that they, the GPs have found that increasingly difficult to send patients are referring to the emergency department because of the ongoing crisis up there and at length of time patients are awaiting. They don't have, the GPs don't have faith in the management team that are currently there. They don't believe that they can fix the problems. Do you agree with that? I would go some way to agreeing with that and I've said it in the past. Look, and this is not a personal attack on any of the management. I think it's just beyond them. The crisis is such, it's so large. There's been years and years of lack of investment. The health service that we need and deserve has outgrown the hospital and its capacity to deliver a proper health care service. So when the management there are trying their best, they're not going to be able to deliver the health service that we need with the resources that they currently have. So it's very important. The health minister would say, I gave them an extra 31 million last year. Where has that money gone? Things have deteriorated. Let's look and drill down on that and see where has that 31 million gone? There's been all sorts of increases, not least the whole thing around energy, increased wage demands. So how much has really gone into recruiting nurses, consultants, and ensuring that there's a proper health service being delivered? But they would say also, I've listened to the minister. Of course, but I'd like to come back in there Jerry, sorry, but they would say the health minister might say, well, look at there are plenty of vacancies there. We've funded for extra nurses, extra consultants, and then the management would say, well, we can't recruit them. Well, maybe they can't be recruited because the situation is so poorly managed at the hospital that people don't want to go work there. Again, I'm very uncomfortable saying that because I don't want this to come across as personal. But when the GP say they don't have faith in management to fix the problems that exist, you can't ignore that either. And if the health minister says, well, we've funded all these spaces, we've given you an extra 31 million and things are actually getting worse, where does the buck stop eventually? Yeah, and we know all the people personally who have the unambitious job of trying to run that health service up there, which certainly hasn't got the resources it needs to effectively give us a health service we need and deserve. And it's easy for the minister to go back, isn't it? On to the people on the ground who are trying very, very hard, and we have to say that. Although what I think, and I've asked the management at the hospital on a number of occasions to do this, is they stand up and say enough's enough. And it might, you know, and say to the minister loudly and clearly, what you're giving us is not enough to deliver the health service that we require. So we get away from the personal attacks on individuals and we look at the service and how it's funded and how it's invested in. And over the years, there's been a serious lack of investment in Latter-Kinney University Hospital. Our population is growing. Our demands on the health service is growing. And what we need to do is grow Latter-Kinney Hospital and we need an extension on our medicine department for a long time. We need more bed blocks built to facilitate the extra beds that are needed and the extra staff. It is crazy for us to think that keep doing the same thing and a change will come. It won't. It's only going to get worse. And that's where I have the difficulty with management. And that's what I would urge the management to do is to stand up and say enough's enough. You need to reinvest and come and look at the difficulties that we're experiencing and invest further in the hospital. Yeah. But surely there is stuff within the control locally to reform how the ED works. Something as simple as, you know, if someone is in there with a cut in a hand that they're not sitting for 36 hours to get two stitches. Simple stuff like that. Are you saying that that's not within the gift of the management to put measures in place that will remove quite a number of people that, you know, maybe do need stitches or a quick scan or something to move them from that ED setting? Because at the moment, you've got people in there with minor injuries. You've got women potentially having a miscarriage. You've got cancer patients. You've got, you know, all going through those doors of the ED. You're of the view that management don't have the resources or the ability to work at least on that part of the hospital system. No. And I think the calendar and only a fortnight ago at the reason the health forum meeting, I had a motion again calling on CELTA and indeed the HSE to really consider again, once again, a minor injuries clinic in Donegal. It's in need. It's one that you've just outlined the reasons why. And if we have nine primary care centres across the county, all state-of-the-art all newly built within the last number of years and some have just actually opened this year as part of the opening of them. But the unfortunate thing is that we're still down staff in each of those primary care centres. But they would be the ideal places where people with minor injuries would be directed to by GPs if and when the adequate and the necessary resources are put in. Do you think the management could perhaps work on how people are discharged there so that when they all fit to go, when they have somewhere to go, that they are discharged rather than waiting for a day or hours and then to be discharged and thus tying up a bed? Or do you think maybe the management could look at not admitting someone for three days when they're not going to be able to get a scan until the Wednesday and they feel perfectly fine, they don't feel the need to be there? Do you not think management could work on things like that that would at least ease some of the pressures that are there? Because it's not all the health ministers fault either. No, it's not. But in fairness to the management, they have been trying a number of initiatives. Unfortunately, the volume, the volume of people that's requiring healthcare service and hospital beds is higher than the hospital beds. Do you think the management could go into the ED when someone's sitting there, when someone's sitting there waiting on a scan and they're there at seven o'clock in the evening and the staff to actually conduct that scan on back on duty to eight o'clock the following morning to go out and say, you know, we actually don't have that scan that's not up and running. So you're sitting there really waiting for people to sleep and then coming to work the following morning. Do you think management could be working on things like that as well? Yeah, and that there is a decision that should be taken by healthcare providers, doctors and nurses. I don't know if management would be able to give that direction. But I mean, they could give that direction to the medical staff that if there is a situation where someone is not going to get their scan until the next day and they're well enough to go home, then they should be directed to go home and come back the next day. But I'll say one thing about that as well because I've a personal experience of this. I've been told to come back and given an appointment and a time to come back the next day for the procedure or the scan to take place and having the persons having to sit from the time they were told from nine in the morning until the early hours of the next morning before they get into bed. So if you're going to do that, you need to be sure that when you tell a patient that they can go home and come back the next morning, they'll be seen at the time that they're given that they are seen. Do you think management will sort of give us a bit of explanation as why someone with a suspected miscarriage is going into the ED and not going straight into maternity or why someone with a card who's a sick cancer patient why they're being put into ED with a load of people with upper respiratory illnesses that if they catch could kill them. I mean, are those not things that we should be able to hope are addressed locally? Yeah, and on just recent weeks I've addressed some of them there and since we've also management in relation to cancer patients who are going in and have the card and then are staying long hours within a very sick emergency department setting and waiting to get a bed. I've been there, I've contacted the hospital about it and this is how much of a crisis our health services in and yes, management need to take responsibility for some of that but the book stops at the very top and the minister's been down and talked and talked and several ministers have been down and talked and talked but even you take a look at the diabetes patients the left of time that we're waiting for proper care for diabetes patients this county is disgraceful. The same with cancer patients our oncology unit is not fit for the amount of patients that we have our step down service is not a fit for the amount of patients that are stepping down out of the hospital beds and to our community settings so there's a lot of things wrong in our health service in Donegal and it's a long time that the minister got up here and done something seriously. Okay. I'll go about fixing that. Right, okay, councillor thanks very much for your time I appreciate you accepting our invite councillor Jay Monagall who is a Sinn Fein councillor and member of the Regional Health Forum 08 660 25000 WhatsApps and texts and this is a story obviously we'll continue with tomorrow and we've been very busy on the phone lines Luh is a disgrace the staff are doing their very best but it's the management that needs to change our mum is nearly 89 and was in a couple of weeks ago she says she never ever wants to go back to it a shame on the management they should step down or be chased but of course if you listen to others they say the management's hands are tied that this is a funding issue and the health service model and not necessarily a local management issue Greg it's hard to sit all their marriage waiting to be seen in ED but the hardest is small children all being sent through ED whoever made that decision it's a disgrace children used to be all sent to pediatrics floor C not anymore hi Greg relating to the ED problems my husband works in the healthcare system so his first-hand experience on this matter he feels that the main cause of back-up and delays are that the GPs are referring people unnecessarily to the ED service therefore causing delays for those who really need treatment now I that time has been made a couple of times as it relates to now Doc sending people to the ED they don't need to be there a GP sending people to the ED that don't need to be there and I spoke to someone who's involved in that within the hospital and I don't want to use the percentage off the top of my head but they looked into that because I had read it out and a couple of messages and it's the GPs aren't referring more people you heard from Dr. McGinnis earlier on that's kind of a little bit of a smoke screen that it's not all about now Doc and GPs referring people unnecessarily does it happen I can't say it doesn't happen but is that what the problem is my information is is from a very reliable sources that that's not the issue that the place isn't full of people that don't really need to be there because the majority are either treated and sent home or admitted into the hospital have a lovely day everybody thanks so much for listening to the show watching the program we'll be back with you tomorrow morning at 9 tune John Breslin's up next around the Northwest