Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Exactly. An example I was going to use, and we have discussed this before, was a lady who was older than me and therefore fell into primary care. The family basically said they could not take her back into the family home, that her dad was in his 80s and not fit to look after her and that she required some type of assisted-living scenario. However, the only options that seemed available to her were staying in the Louth County Hospital in Dundalk and blocking a bed, for want of a better term - obviously, that was not suitable - or going into a nursing home, but she was too old. Thus, it was literally the service she needed or the requirements were not there. She needed a certain amount of supports put around her to provide a decent framework so she could live her best life and play her part in society, rather than having us just locking her away, which is a sin this State has committed over many years and not something anybody in this room wants to do. How does the Minister of State anticipate dealing with that?

I will mention two other issues I dealt with before. Families whose children's needs are not being met come to us. In one case the child is a teenager and the other involves a woman in her 40s. The teenage kid has a number of siblings, I think there are three of them, and they all have special needs, so the mother is under severe pressure. I will not get into the ins and outs of it, but she has not been able to avail of respite services. In the other family, the parents of the lady in her 40s are in their 70s. The parents have only been able to get two hours once a week, which does not provide any real element of respite. I think Praxis Care assessed her and found she was not suitable for some of what it provides. There is nowhere, therefore, for these people to go.