Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The dementia advisers are very much to the fore and I met some of them recently who had taken part in LGBT+ training so they could also recognise the symptoms. Well, I do not mean the symptoms. The point I am trying to make is that I met a gay woman one day and her only fear was that if she developed dementia, nobody would know she was gay because she could not remember. The dementia advisers have taken on the role of dementia champions and I was delighted to see that happening. All 28 dementia advisers we have on the ground are really active in the communities. When a person receives a diagnosis of dementia for the very first time, it is a shock. There is also a lot of stigma around it, which thankfully we have moved away from. However, to have a dementia adviser in your own community that you can reach out to is important because some people can get early-onset dementia. One of the things I want to touch on is that we talk a lot about the fair deal scheme in relation to nursing homes but one of the areas I am exploring at the moment is that dementia-specific category within fair deal. Everybody here will be familiar with Carebright, Bruff, County Limerick, and St. Josephs, Shankill, which are dementia-specific-only for your pathway through dementia. At present, 64,000 people in the country have been diagnosed with dementia. We have 11 diagnoses per day. We are an ageing population and we are going to see that grow. There is probably a raft of people with dementia who are not diagnosed. One of my focuses is that it is really important that we put in place the right supports. Some 70% of people currently in nursing homes either have a diagnosis of dementia or have dementia symptoms. It is an area that needs a lot of focus.