Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and the officials from the HSE. This time last year the waiting time for the fair deal scheme was approximately six weeks. In the meantime it went up to 16 weeks, but now, because of the resources put in, it is down to 11 weeks. It is quite alarming to hear that by the end of this year it is projected that the waiting time will be between 18 and 20 weeks.

Several families are borrowing money to get a loved one into a nursing home. The application takes approximately four weeks and they then apply to various nursing homes. If a place comes up they are afraid to lose it, so they borrow the money. After they have done that and settled their loved one, they panic in case the money will run out before the fair deal place is secured. Has the HSE received applications from several families wanting to waive the fee for one or two weeks because they cannot borrow any more money and are afraid their loved ones will lose the place and they will go back to square one? How will the HSE deal with this in the future? As soon as a place comes up families will borrow money, but it is not a bottomless pit. A family who came to me recently said the most they could borrow was €6,000. If the waiting time goes up to 18 or 20 weeks they might have to borrow €20,000, and even with that they would not secure their loved one’s place.

Are we any closer to making Daxas and fampridine available on the medical card scheme?

Mr. O’Brien said 97% of patients access specialist inpatient beds for palliative care within seven days. That is good, but is it in their area of choice? Is it suitable for families? Is it in the patients' home towns or is it miles away?

Mr. O’Brien said the number of discretionary medical cards had gone from 50,000 to 70,000 in the past year, but I presume most of that is the returning of cards that had been taken away. There are some very sick children with life-limiting conditions who are financially outside the medical card bracket. I know of a case which is so rare that there are only four people in the world on the special trials. The family has been refused a medical card. The child will undergo numerous operations. The mother has had to give up work to care for the child. Where does discretion fit into this? I am sure there is no one in the primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, who can assess how much that rare disease will cost the family.