Paudge Connolly (Cavan-Monaghan, Independent)

It is not quite equal. It is proposed to give five minutes each to Deputies Gregory and James Breen, four minutes to Deputy McHugh, five minutes each to Deputies Sargent and Boyle and ten minutes to Deputy Ó Caoláin.

Although most older people wish to remain at home, State policies are directed towards their leaving home for a nursing home bed. Families may apply for subventions for private nursing homes but the only funding available for maintaining a relative in the family home is the carer's allowance.

Home helps provide invaluable care for the elderly, not just in physical terms by cleaning up, but in many cases the home help is the elderly person's only contact with the outside world and looks after that person by shopping for him or her and so on. In 2003 my local health board, the North Eastern Health Board, cut 80,000 home help hours, which is equivalent to 40 wholetime jobs. The tragedy is that these jobs are at the cutting edge of service delivery, involving hands-on people providing a fantastic cost-saving service for the health board. However, this was an Anne Robinson "Weakest Link" cut which affected the two weakest links, the carer and the person being cared for. Those people are on the bottom rung of society as far as health executives are concerned. No executive positions were lost at this time.

This is the Government's way of cutting costs. The cost of home help went up so it decided to reduce the number of hours, treating the situation as an exercise in balancing the books. In this year's budget the Government realised the mistake of last year and retreated part of the way towards re-establishing those hours. It is generally acknowledged throughout the country that the North Eastern Health Board budget is totally inadequate. The per capita health budget for the region is €15, while the national average is €19 per head, which makes services very difficult to organise. In 2003 members of the North Eastern Health Board unanimously rejected the service plan and budget for the year.

This year the board took the unusual step of restoring some of those 80,000 hours, but putting back 35,000 hours still leaves us with a shortfall of 45,000 hours. The board restored those hours by raiding the reserve fund, though health boards are legally obliged to hold a 3% reserve. We do not even have that 3% reserve but I welcome the brave decision of the board to take €500,000 from that fund to restore 35,000 home help hours, even though that move is akin to selling the silverware.

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