Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No. The Deputy has the added advantage of having been inside the system. As a former Minister of State, who worked in the system, she knows where there is potential but it is not as simple as she has made it out to be from time to time.

Home help is an extremely difficult and demanding service because the people who expect the service are waiting on a daily basis and people have different needs. Some patients require a great deal of assistance and others need a daily visit. There is a vast difference between both types of care and the commitment needed.

I would love to see some means found to address travel when it comes to the provision of home help. The number of people a home help person can visit in a day is limited by the extent to which he or she can get through the traffic in an area, and the traffic system has all changed. I have not mentioned Naas General Hospital and the community care services in Kildare but please consider that they have been mentioned. With all that in mind, we ask for an up-to-date report to be provided to us on a monthly basis.

I thank the officials from the HSE and the Department of Health for attending and giving of their time. I thank the members who are here all the time and who stayed until the end of the meeting, I hasten to add, just in case people think I had hoped that everybody might leave. Finally, I thank the committee officials for being ever-present.