Damien English (Meath, Fine Gael)

Provision has been made in the planning legislation for child care facilities, community facilities, green spaces, open spaces and so on, yet there is no obligation to provide facilities for the elderly. Planning has moved on from the stage of one application per field to local area plans and the development of 100 acres at a time — strategic development zones or SDZs. These involve comprehensive planning for an area to provide all the services required for community use, child care and so on, yet no reference is made in the planning laws to providing facilities such as nursing homes for elderly people. We must examine this issue so that when areas are first being developed we can provide facilities for the elderly. It is more affordable to provide such facilities when it is done at the planning stage.

The Government should also encourage people who are building houses to allow for a granny flat or some accommodation to the side of their house. A small grant could be provided for this purpose. If the work is done at this stage it will save €60,000 or €70,000 in ten or 15 years' time if people then have a need to modify their homes to cater for an elderly or disabled family member who can no longer live alone. People should be advised that it would be wise to lay out their house in such as way as to make it easy to modify at a later stage should that be necessary. In certain areas, building regulations now specify that doors must be a certain width to ensure homes are suitable for disabled people or those in need of a wheelchair. Some regulations also specify the inclusion of ramps.

People should be encouraged to take these things into consideration without putting a great financial burden on them. We should all be mindful that we may have to take in an elderly relative some day and that houses should be designed in such as way as to require minimal modification. This will reduce the costs to homeowners and the State in the future. It is not rocket science. A little encouragement is all that is required. We, in the House, are all aware of the situation as we deal with it regularly but, in general, people may not think of such things when they plan their new house.

Sufficient support is not available for people in the home and they are begging for help. In some cases they require very little to allow them to stay in the home. Sometimes it may only be the loan of special equipment that is difficult to get but is available from the local Health Service Executive office. We should jump at the opportunity when a family member tells us he or she wants to keep his or her elderly relative at home. We should do all in our power to facilitate them but we do not.

We must provide more community nursing home beds. The only one in my area is St. Joseph's in Trim. It provides an excellent service. People are queuing up to get into it. The waiting list is long due to demand on the service. I am sure there is such a centre in every county but there is a need for three or four of them. Community nursing homes should be available in every town. Even if the cost of this service were to increase it would still be more affordable than private nursing homes. The standard of care in the nursing homes under the ownership of the health authorities is second to none. They are brilliant and we need more of them. It is as simple as that. There is no other way around it. Tax breaks should be given to people to help build them cheaply without the involvement of the private sector. Most nursing homes provide a very high standard of care but some do not and try to take advantage of elderly people in their care. Such practices must be checked and examined but we are failing to do so properly at the moment.

Subvention rates are deplorable and do not meet even 20% of the cost of nursing home care. Assessing someone's needs involves assessing his or her savings and how much of them could be used to pay for a year's worth of nursing home care. Some wise individual has decided that a home worth over €300,000 should be assessed differently in certain areas. People now pay €300,000 for a cottage, which they then bulldoze and replace with a new house. The average bungalow probably costs over €500,000 in Wicklow, Kildare and Dublin.

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