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AS AN ATHLETE who wore the Irish national colours in basketball and represented her native Donegal in inter-county GAA competitions, Ellevyn Irwin was a regular visitor to the physiotherapists’ practice rooms.
“Most of the time I rang up to see a physio they said ‘I’m busy, come back next week’,” she said.
“People ring when they’re in need, they want to see someone then and there – people don’t call up their GP and say that they’re going to be sick in 2 weeks.”
But from that frustration was born what would become her launchpad into the world of entrepreneurship, Click Clinic.
The concept is to link clients with non-serious conditions with their nearest, available healthcare providers through an app.
The GPs, physiotherapists and other health professionals would then come direct to the client after the patient made a choice based on user feedback and practitioners’ areas of expertise.
“It’s a bit like Hailo, but for healthcare professionals,” Irwin told TheJournal.ie.
At the moment, people have to go online and search for healthcare professionals, which I think is inconvenient – healthcare should be at the fingertips of the people who need it, it should be one click.”
The app would also handle the payment process, while healthcare workers would receive higher fees than for a standard consultation to compensate them for their travel time.
The big business kickstart
The 25-year-old said she had been carrying the idea for a few years, but it wasn’t until she recently heard a radio advertisement for the Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur (IBYE) competition that she was given a kickstart to transform the concept into a startup plan.
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“I just didn’t know how to go about it; I wouldn’t have had a business if it wasn’t for that ad,” she said.
Irwin, who represents the Local Enterprise Office in Donegal, is among 24 finalists in the running for the title, and a share of a total €2 million investment pool available to the range of startup and established businesses.
Irwin, centre, with two other finalists from the IBYE competition Mark Stedman / Photocall Ireland
Mark Stedman / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland
Something wrong with the healthcare model
Irwin is now based in Dublin, where she has been studying physiotherapy at Trinity College after earlier finishing an economics and finance degree at UCD.
She said both the HSE and practitioners were losing millions each year because patients failed to turn up for appointments, but her idea would cut the need for waiting lists and offer more business to practitioners.
“There is something seriously wrong with the whole healthcare model.”
She plans to have a bare-bones product ready for launch in late January and, for now, she was focusing only on the physiotherapy market in Dublin.
But by September Irwin expects to have other healthcare professionals signed up and within 3 years she wants to be running in London, and in New York 2 years later.
More information about the IBYE competition and other finalists is on the award’s website.
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Is this the genuine homeless, as in the one’s that actually sleep on the streets, not the one’s that run to their mum’s house after checking in to the 4 star Gresham Hotel (but on one is playing the system) then yes as it’s a hot meal and fresh clothing to put on.
@Gavin R: are you actually saying that those who are staying in the Gresham hotel out of necessity at the moment (and are being forced out soon by the way) are there only because it’s a four star hotel not because they need a place to stay? Christ, if you ever find yourself homeless I hope you never have to deal with the same nasty shite that you’re spouting now.
@Kevin Creagh: Firstly myself and my wife have family that would never see us on the streets the same as 90% in the hotels, during the recession I fought every week with the bank barley making my mortgage payments, but do you know what i didn’t sit waiting for a hand outs I took jobs paying just minimum wage and before you say playing the system is not happening with all the other PC left bullshite, I know people doing it, wake up, let’s just give free housing to everyone who doesn’t want to contribute to the Society, RTE carried out programmes that showed people who found, as you say on hard times, still having kids and the fathers not working but wouldn’t give answers when asked why and to top it off refused accommodation because it wasn’t big enough.
I think the people who leave their own homes at nite to go out in the freezing cold to feed & look after the homeless are doing a fantastic job, one that the government should be doing! Imagine been on the streets last nite!
@Colette Kearns: well said. Lots of the genuime homeless go to the hospitals waiting rooms at night to sleep and stay warm..also the garda station store street let’s u sleep there .
Were it not for these volunteer groups feeding, clothing and supplying sleeping bags, the government would have a bigger problem on its hands. There would be more dead bodies on the streets.
The Muslim Sisters of Eire do fantastic work feeding, clothing, and giving sleeping bags to the homeless week in week out. There is also Ken Smollen, he organises the collection of non perishable foods donated by companies and individuals and distributes the food to needy families all, those in food poverty, all over the Midland areas. There are over 200 families who need his help. He also attends at the eviction courts in the Midlands offering help and support to the people hauled before these throwback to famine times.
I’ve seen these groups at work around the streets of Dublin and I often think that they are completely wasting their time given that most of their ‘clients’ are ultimately on the scam anyway and are neither homeless or in need of help.
@Julie Burn: Shop St. Galway has quite a few of them.
There is 1 Irish lad begging outside my place of work. Has lovely new Nike Air Max every few weeks and decent clothes on his back. I would be of the opinion that he is chancing his arm as several people have seen his frequenting the local pubs and clubs.
@mcgoo: you have quite obviously never been homeless! I actually feel wounded by your comment, and I am sure almost every other person who ever had to avail of one of these groups’ would feel the same way. When I became homeless I started out eating nothing but dry bread with a pint of milk for the first two weeks, and even though some others told me that I could get ONE meal a day.. And I was embarrassed first time I went. and please don’t think the meals are what you would have at home, size wise. Far from it. Think about having stew, a mug size full. That’s the meal, OK..sometimes if you’re very lucky and not too many turn up you can have a 2nd portion. But what really counts is that it is warm and you have company of people who care about what happens to you.
Ps. Not homeless anymore
@paulganly: soup runs etc keep people alive, more comfortable and have a morale boosting effect by treating them like the human beings they are at least once a day. Nothing is stopping the state correcting the structural problems mentioned in parallel.
Meanwhile Leo will be in Brussels today telling his puppet masters how wonderful the European Project is working and how great a country Ireland has become under his stewardship
The Disconnect.
Instead of financing to educate the already rich. put the money in to educate the already poor. to bring them up to the same standard. that is how to eradicate poverty.
All these people should have been comfortable, safe and warm in bedsits last night but The theorists in their comfortable leafy suburbs homes had them evicted.
We need to build a designated area in the city to cater for the raw homeless – by this I mean all the rough adult sleepers on the streets. Then in turn pass a law that forbids sleeping on public streets and areas after say 11pm. Anyone found sleeping rough would then be brought to the designated area. Everyone brought there would be assessed for alcoholism, drug addiction, etc… and given a private room that they keep until they are over their addiction.
This would also secure an address for social welfare so that they can begin to turn their lives around. The designated area would have all the facilities required to help a person back up on their feet – from food to medical attention, education and whatever else is required to break the cycle and allow these people to start afresh.
With proper focused attention we could turn the lives of 100s of people around. I would finance this by diverting money away from many of the NGOs who are only scratching at the surface of the problem whilst making wages for “CEOs” and the likes their main priority.
@Daniel Dunne: they have those… They are called homeless hostels. The Simon is one of those or the Fairways (Galway ) is another. The 1st problem is that there aren’t enough and the 2nd problem is that almost all homeless hostels in existence today in Ireland are for men, and barely any for women. So you are right, there need to be more hostels built, but they need to be mixed gender, so that if a man and woman turn up at the same time and it’s lashing outside with a windchill of -2c, she’s not sent packing while he’s shown to a nice warm room.
I have to say on the many occasions I have passed the group giving out soup, tea and coffee on O’Connell Bridge, I think they are completely wasting their time and money
@Peter Byrne: I sincerely hope you keep walking. Staying out all night, on foot, not stopping to eat, might eventually give you some insight into one week in the lives of homeless people with nowhere to go.
Seriously? Yes those groups are helpful. Sadly I’ve had to use their generosity. But these voluntary groups handing out a hot meal at night don’t just hand out a meal and warm clothes or sleeping bags if you need it, they also inform themselves on what help is available and they will stand with you while you’re eating and give you as much information as possible (of course there are some who just come for the grub and leave again straight away). But I found that no matter which group you went to they always remember you and ask how you are and if you managed to put some of the information you were given into practice (not in a pushy way, just in conversation, I think because if someone gets too pushy some people won’t come back for a hot meal)
So yes, they do help.
Very easy to say “instead of just giving them fish, we need to teach them how to fish…” So many people are broken they could neither use the rod, find a source of fish nor have a stove to cook on. Never mind do the cooking. So we just give them the hot meal and drink, pro tem. And that’s what’s wrong with humanity as well. Damn all long term thinking.
The volunteers are doing great work no doubt about that but the question we should be all asking is it that so many people are falling through the cracks.
The State is conveniently funding thousands of voluntary organizations to do the work that they should be doing themselves.
The Homeless,Elderly Care and Childcare should all be brought under Official State Care , the workers given proper pay and conditions etc. On Joe Duffy last week we heard how Agencies funded by the State are getting €30 an hour to employ carers for the elderly and the carers are only been paid €10 per hour and get no travel expenses . All carers should be employed by the HSE directly . Some the Volunteers would make excellent employees.
@Aine O Connor: Did a few soup runs with SVDP around town when I was in college years back. The striking thing was the level of entitlement from some of the ‘clients’. If you couldn’t provide the right type of sandwich that they wanted or the make the cup of tea exactly as they liked you would be told in no uncertain terms where to shove it. Interesting experience.
*Sorry if this is TLTR for some… but I think it’s important… otherwise I wouldn’t have taken time to write and post it*
I think the point of the Journal’s article and Dr Beth Watt’s views can be interpreted in two ways – 1) Helping the poor and unfortunates allows many of them to escape responsibility for their own actions/choices of lifestyle and 2) There is a real need to help those who are genuinely incapable of helping themselves to escape a poor or unfortunate lifestyle.
The poor – and unfortunates – will always be with us, in any generation/age/century or any class of society, including our own Irish one, no matter what is done for them. As soon as one generation of them dies off, another arises or overlaps. It’s a constant in all societies, local or world-wide.
The first interpretation cleverly points out that there are people who will purposely scam off others’ generosity, not take responsibility for themselves. The second highlights a need for society to accept responsibility to help those in genuine need of help.
It is a fact that there are many who selfishly, gainfully abuse the “system/s” available within society, without making any effort for themselves or their families (plenty of evidence of that… e.g. the lady reported on, in today’s Irish news, of receiving €55,000 p.a. in various Irish Social Welfare payments).
It is also a fact that there are people in genuine need of society’s help.
We should completely avoid generosity to the first, whether they be Irish or immigrant people. These are the people who scam off everybody.
In this context, Romanian immigrants have been mentioned above… I think it is very right and proper to target them. I saw, several times, in Swords, Co Dublin, a van load of Romanian women and children being disgorged from a van in the mornings and sent to ‘begging stations’ outside supermarkets, banks etc., and being collected, with their day’s collected monies, by the van in the evenings. Certainly an organised enterprise, and no one knows for sure where the monies generously donated into begging cups go or what use they are put to. Where enquiries have been made by Gárdaí, they have been mostly found to have been related to Romanian-based gangs. No doubt, there are other such illegal gang-related ventures here in Ireland, particularly in people-trafficking and prostitution circles.
For the second, under our Irish Constitution, the State needs to accept TOTAL responsibility to actually treat all its citizens equally. That way, there would be no need for Volunteer groups – nor a need to fund them.
There are many volunteers who could be given state-employed jobs in this sector. A specific tax can pay for this, if a Government can be trusted to use it honestly, instead of funding some volunteer groups. It would do away with tax-exempt charity organisations, some of which abuse this privilege to their own benefit, as has been already exposed.
When the State avoids this responsibility, it is scamming off the goodwill of all volunteers as badly as the first group do.
I do not waste my time physically volunteering because, in my opinion, the State abuses all volunteers’s goodwill, and by doing so, escapes its own responsibility, under our State’s Constitution.
Instead, I donate to Concern by monthly DD for international use and regularly by cash to St Vincent de Paul for local use.
Dr Bett Watts’ comments are worthy of careful examination, and respect, by all.
When is this country going to Wake Up and do the right thing if they want to help people who are homeless, a great majority of the people who are homeless in Ireland today are in desperate need of DETOX centers being set up to Help them to come off drugs.And that is a fact, No one has mentioned the fact that there is only 8 beds in the south of All of Ireland to treat over 2000 registered addicts to get clean. That figure does not include those who are Not registered. One Government after another has turned a Blind Eye to there plight since the 70,s. When are they going to open up Detox centers for them to get the help they Really need ? There is an epidemic among drug users that has multiplied out of All proportions and No One is doing Anything or Saying Anything about it. People are being found dead Evert Day in the week in this country from overdose,s , the graveyards are Full of peoples families. It is a Living Disgrace, and not One politician has mentioned the fact that beds are Needed to Help them. It is time Now to bring back the doctors and nurse,s that have had to leave Ireland to find work and Open Up Detox centers so that addicts and the Families of addicts that are caught up in the Misery of addiction can get the Help they So Desperately need.!
I agree that a solution to the problem is of course best what that would be I am not sure but I am sure that homeless people rely upon the soup kitchens and organizations that give them clothing and help them to be a little bit more comfortable but no it’s not the answer the answer is to get them all into homes permanently
When I arrived in Ireland 19 years ago from France, I ended up being penniless for a while, staying in a B&B. I would go to eating houses every day, including Focus Ireland. Eventually I recovered, got a home and work, but never spoke to anyone about that disturbing time. Later when I worked at Accenture, I got the chance to buy a computer with them as part as a charity plan. I was able to give the money to the charity of my choice, I chose Focus Ireland. I now live in the USA and I do miss Dublin at times, but I will never forget those two months living rough. It stays in my memory for the rest of my life.
Frustrating article. It just repeatedly says “maybe offering to help them isn’t helpful” followed by “I’m not saying we shouldn’t” and back to “but maybe it’s not helpful” without ever saying why.
Why not open more shelters or house people faster? Most of the world, it’s bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo that takes too long to get people off the streets (too many requirements that you must be on drugs, an alcoholic, if domestic violence survivor then you must have children or the danger must be “immediate,” or have a diagnosed mental illness to get into shelters…) if there were more shelters for women who simply “fell through the cracks” everywhere else in the world (even the UK/London) then we’d get people off the streets faster.
I.e. if I’m sleeping at Dublin Airport don’t just give me a damn blanket, give me a live-in job so I have a place to live and work to do. Why doesn’t that idea work in so many countries, I’ll never know.
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