Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This has been an interesting discussion. I am sorry that I missed the presentations earlier but I had to go to the Chamber.

I have a couple of questions. One of the issues Professor Lynch touched on is the profits made in the industry. While this is not a scientific way of approaching it, I am reflecting on the example of my own community of Ballyfermot. A large number of people in that community - mainly women but some men as well - are carers and traditionally they worked the home help teams. They were locally based. They were run in local offices by the HSE, nuns and all sorts of people. Everybody knew everybody they were caring for. Professor Lynch said that being cared for is also about being loved. That was a huge element of that job. One woman, for example, on my road looked after three of her neighbours. She was mad about them. She was there for them all the time. They could pick up the phone if they needed her or if something awful happened. She spent a couple of hours with each of them every day. Despite all the protests we had to try to maintain the home help system, she works for a company and she is tied to time. She can only spend 15 minutes with one person, half an hour another person and the company follows her on a mobile app to make sure that she is in and out on time. She is totally pressurised and she hates the job. She has not got the same rapport, because she is not necessarily minding older neighbours who she grew up with. It seems that the concept of privatising and making care a for-profit business has demoralised and dehumanised the sector, both for the workers in it and for the people who are receiving it.

There is the added problem that many migrant workers go into this because it is so badly paid and badly regulated. Many migrant workers find it hugely difficult. I suspect there is a level of exploitation. The witnesses might comment on that if there has been any research on how migrant workers fare in the sector. There is also the added problem that older people are sometimes deaf. They may not understand an African accent or an Indian accent and they feel alienated. The movement away, whereby the State is extracting itself from the home help system in the community and allowing all these multinational companies to flourish on the back of that around the country, has been a disaster. I know so many people, as I am sure do all the other Deputies and Senators, who cannot get out of hospital because no home care package is ready for them. They are, therefore, occupying beds that they do not want to be in. They want to get out but there is no home care package, because this for-business model is messing it up.

I have some direct questions on the witnesses’ research and the work that they do around migrant workers, as well as around respite. I was a home carer for approximately six years for my mother. The respite grant would come in June. It was the sum of €1,500 or something. You would mostly use that to pay your car insurance or some big bill, because the money you would get during the year would not cover it. The respite never came. In my own community, there is a great little community hospital called Cherry Orchard Hospital, but it has closed all the respite wards. That is where people used to be able to get a week off. They could put their mammy, daddy or daughter, etc., in so that they could get a week off. The whole thing to me seems to be in an awful mess. What I am hearing here is confirming that. My questions are around migrant workers, respite care and the question of mental health. I have just finished reading Dervla Murphy’s autobiography. It is extremely sad how the mental health of the carer, as well as the people they are caring for, starts to disintegrate if they do not get support.