Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to come in on a couple of primary care issues. I agree with Dr. Henry about the alignment between primary care and front-line care. Until we get proper congruence there, we are not going to have an effective system. Indeed, it will be a waste of money because people will present at acute hospitals when they could be looked after in primary care. A lot of it comes down to home help and decisions that are being made in that area and the criteria that are used. Let us take, for example, an elderly woman who has broken many bones. She has broken both her hands, her leg, her wrist, her toes and her hip. She has suffered a shattering of her knees. She has diabetes and is a high fall risk. She cannot stand for any longer than ten minutes. She is also a coeliac with an overactive thyroid, high blood pressure, anemia and severe dermatitis that gets infected regularly such that she has to be hospitalised. She also has poor hearing and poor eyesight. The response back from her application and its appeal is that she does not meet the criteria. Do the witnesses not think that somebody with all of those conditions in a high-risk situation should meet the criteria for home help?