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

I apologise for my late arrival. I welcome the witnesses this morning. I have watched with interest what they have had to say.

From my own experience of dealing with constituents, this is a very important subject because it is forever where the carers are concerned. The carer has to deal with a situation that changes from time to time and gets inexorably worse. Unless family members are readily at hand to interchange with them, carers have found themselves in situations where they are stuck with the job 24-7 and because the patient's condition may vary, they are uneasy all the time. They are under pressure and stress and they really do not know what to do.

There is also the question of carer fatigue, which kicks in as well. At the present time, there are quite a number of carers all over the country who have cared 24-7 for patients in various conditions, who are at their wits' end, insofar as giving themselves a break is concerned. I know there is respite care and so on and so forth but it needs to be looked at again. It needs to be improved in such a way as to ensure that the carer can rely on some help or support being available more regularly and more readily available than it has been in the past. I know that there are competing demands but the situation is pressing and serious and it is not going to go away.

I happened to be on the Eastern Health Board many years ago with a member who began suffering from Alzheimer's and, unfortunately, he passed away early in life.

I think it was an introduction for all of us as to the severity of the condition and the options available to the family, the supporters, the carers and so on. My question is simply on what advances are being made now on the medical side to deal with the situation. Are there advances dealing with specific aspects of the particular situation? Can these be relied upon indefinitely with the view to improving the quality of the life for the patient and the carers as well? Is anything happening in that area? Medicine is making many advances now. That is one area that would be useful and helpful.