There Will Be Blood and It May Be Mine ; Interview [Eire Region]

Summary

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HE'S on the cusp of becoming our next health minister but, as a young married man focused on raising his family of five children and building up a general practice, political office was just about the last thing on Dr James Reilly's mind. All that changed, however, after the busy GP and father witnessed - and suffered - first-hand the ineptitudes of our deplorable health system.

First came the devastating news that his threeyear-old son had autism - a condition the system failed to identify. Instead, his shocked parents were told their child was mentally impaired.

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Extract

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There Will Be Blood and It May Be Mine ; Interview [Eire Region]

Then came Dr Reilly's mounting frustration over his patients' inability to get proper medical attention under Mary Harney's regime.

But the undoubted turning point was his son's illness, about which Dr Reilly has never spoken at length in public before.

He says: 'He didn't speak. To cut a long story short, we were told he was handicapped.

'But he was autistic. And he is autistic. Here's the thing that annoyed me - the failure to get an accurate diagnosis on this side of the Irish Sea. I was told it was atypical! You can imagine my response to that! I could see he was different.

'He had no speech when he was assessed yet they u...

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