Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important subject. It is very dear to my heart and it needs much more attention than it has got. I know the Minister of State means well and I pay tribute to him as he made the first move to get a day care home for the elderly in Cootehill opened by next June. It was promised in June 2002, but even though it took four years to get it, I thank the Minister of State for it.

The care of the elderly and of the disabled is in serious difficulty. I recently received a phone call from the friend of an Alzheimer's patient. I was advised to call early in the morning or I would be unable to speak to the patient's wife. The patient is aware of what is going on, but he is too ill to be left alone. A very able person from the Alzheimer's Society of Ireland is currently on maternity leave and there is nobody to replace her in the area. The patient's wife is now only getting very limited help. An octogenarian man from Cavan with a handicapped son was only recently granted two and a half hours of home help per week, which works out at over 45 minutes a day for three days a week. Anything less than one hour per week is absolutely useless.

I am worried about the different service provided in different areas. An elderly lady in a wheelchair in Donegal received 12 hours of home help although her husband is still alive. They are now living in County Monaghan where she only gets two hours. This is just not on. Someone in County Cavan has waited for two years for an EPG grant because of difficulties between the HSE and the council. They cannot get the OT's report sorted out. If someone needs an EPG grant, he or she is either aged or sick. I put down a question on this and I was told that the Minister has no responsibility. Who has responsibility for issues such as this? I have heard of another case where an engineer from the county council told a family he could not look at their house for four months. There must be some degree of sympathy for people in such cases.

An elderly person was in hospital in Dublin and his wife had to stay in a bed and breakfast while visiting him. She was told by the health officer that there was no possibility of her getting any allowance for her stay. However, if that person had received treatment via the national treatment purchase fund in England, they would have been put up in a four-star hotel. We must be serious about health care for the elderly. I recently received a phone call from a neighbour whose mother has been seriously ill for some years with depression. The last time I raised this issue in the House, she had been speaking to me on the phone a few days before and I could hear her mother crying like a child in the background. Yet those in Cavan General Hospital psychiatric section do not see that as a problem. We must take this seriously and ensure that the elderly and those who care for them are looked after properly.

I could continue at length on the home help situation and the trials through which people are put to secure their entitlements. We were told in this House at the last budget but one that 9,000 people would receive a subvention for summer respite care, but I believe that the actual figure was only approximately 5,600. Not enough effort was put into it to ensure that those entitled to it received it. The subvention is also a joke — I raised the matter in the Dáil yesterday and will not return to it — in that there is totally different financing in the north east from that in other parts of the country.

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