Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am well aware of the people behind this, namely, the patients and citizens who are impacted by the decisions made. I deal with them in my constituency, as does Deputy Doherty in his. The Deputy pointed to what is happening in Donegal and to a constituent he has met. I would point out that this year 53,000 of our citizens will benefit from home support services and a further 235 people will benefit from intensive home care packages, which they need. That is an increase on last year. I fully support the director general of the HSE, Mr. Paul Reid, and the work he is doing in the HSE. We have the ability to grow services and deliver the home help hours that are needed but we have to ensure that the providers of those services are conscious of our budgetary parameters. That can be done with the level of funding available to the HSE. The reason it is so important to within budget is that failure to do so will have two outcomes. The first is that decisions on other public services to be made by other Departments will be impacted. The second is we will end up funding an ever greater amount of public services in the future based on tax revenue that we may not always have. I do not want that to happen. I am confident that we can meet the needs of patients and support the work of Paul Reid with the money available to the HSE and the Department of Health. This is demonstrated by the 53,000 people availing of our home care services.