Mr. Gerry Martin:

Our organisation is dementia specific in that we only engage in dementia specific care. It is a nationwide organisation and has 51 day care centres across the country. It is to be found in every county in Ireland. We are engaged with about 1,200 families in direct home care. We have two respite care facilities, one in Blackrock and one in Killaloe.

The issue, as we state in our submission, is that there are 42,000 people in Ireland with dementia at various stages. That figure is projected to rise to 147,000 by 2041. With the cuts in the past four years we have seen waiting lists grow. We have just about managed to keep the services above water, largely due to the fund-raising efforts of our local people, but the waiting lists have grown. We are also unable to extend the care provided, particularly day care, for people as the disease progresses. The vast majority of people would be in day care for one day, for example, but the need might be a lot greater owing to carer stress. We believe the carer stress issue, with the greatest of respect to all carers, is particularly heightened in managing a person with dementia in the home.

There is a further issue. There is something of a lottery in how the HSE cuts are distributed. There are areas of the country where we experienced small cuts, while in others there are larger ones. It is quite difficult to manage from an equity point of view and obviously puts even further burdens on the local community to try to fill the gap.