Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Regarding the increase in the number of home-help hours - while increasing, it will not go up by a great deal - can the Minister give a breakdown between the public-private and voluntary providers? I understand that when the tender process for the provision of those services is concluded, the individual health agencies will have their preferred providers and they will have to select from those. My sense of this is that the choice available to them is frequently between different private providers and that fewer home-help hours are being provided by the HSE. I echo what Deputy Durkan said. It seems the State is getting out of the business of caring for older people, which is to be very much regretted.

Specifically with regard to the single assessment tool for older people, which is extremely important, the output targets for 2016 and 2017 are a little vague. At what stage of development is the phased implementation of the IT to enable the standardised assessment tool? It is to be phased in but that could be done over the next 200 years. The target for 2017 is to work with providers to establish the greater capacity of the single assessment tool assessments. They should be doing that in any event. The single assessment tool, the monitoring process and the frail elderly programmes should be integrated. Many people would consider those to be fairly basic but they are now being listed in the Department's targets and achievements.

I understand the need to provide information and that information is welcome, but the assertion was that something was to be phased in during 2016. However, no indication has been given of how far that process got, how many old people have been assessed using the single assessment tool and whether all public health nurses are using it. Good luck to those nurses who find the time to use it, given that they are overworked.

The distinct lack of ambition shown in the section on services for older people is reflective of how this and successive Governments have slowly put clear blue water between themselves and care of the elderly. It is not untrue to say there is a plan, be it one which has been fully worked out and written down or that is in the back of someone's mind, because clearly the Government is trying to get out of the business of looking after older people. That service has been outsourced to large, global corporations that are making a fortune. The Minister knows them and I will not name them. As I had a bad experience after I had named one of them, I will not do so again, but we all know what we are talking about. These companies are making a great deal of money. They are often the only providers on the preferred provider lists.

HSE home helps approach me - I am sure they also attend other members' clinics - to say they are losing their hours and are not being replaced. They are going to private sector providers. There have been "Prime Time Investigates" programmes about the private provision of home care services and as I do not want to go back over them, will the Minister provide us with a breakdown of the single assessment tool and hours directly provided by home helps?