Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I congratulate Deputy English for his excellent speech which addressed all the major issues in this debate on care for retired or elderly people. He encompassed the words of many of us who have served in this House for far longer than him. One issue he addressed concerned disabled person's housing grants.

I had the privilege of processing the first disabled person's housing grant in the local authority in my area in 1976 or 1977. I cannot remember how much the grant was but it was sufficient to make a major contribution to an extension to a house to facilitate an amputee. The first inquiry was made in August and the work was finished by November. This was in the days before computers and all the developments which are supposed to have been so beneficial to us since then. It was before the introduction of a slick assessment of planning applications in local authorities and before the same degree of care and attention was given to elderly people. Yet, everything was put in place in the space of three months. This included planning permission; it was not even an exempt development.

It could take three or more years to achieve such an outcome for elderly people today. If we discuss nursing homes and nursing care and attention, we must also weigh up the alternatives and whether they are made available. In the past two days, I was asked to visit a family whose home is in a serious state of disrepair. The household includes a person with special needs who uses a wheelchair and attends a day care centre and another person who acts as a carer. Buckets are used to catch water leaking from the roof, water is running down the walls, the house has rising damp and birds are building nests in the rafters. The house is dilapidated to an embarrassing degree.

After some investigation, I discovered the local authority had, as my colleague noted, made the two people an offer, an offer they cannot refuse. It offered them a new house which was between ten and 20 miles away. People who have lived all their lives in one place do not want to move away from it. They wish to stay among their friends who they have known all their lives and in a place where they have ready support and where they know and can talk to, rely on or argue with their neighbours. To shift them 20 miles away from their original home is unfair on them because it changes their entire lifestyle.

The local authority's next offer was, to use that famous phrase, a demountable dwelling; the answer to the Lord's Prayer. I queried whether it might not be better to issue the maximum rate of disabled person's grant and use it to refurbish the house as much as possible, re-roof it, make it comfortable for its occupants and then leave them alone. I was told by the relevant officer that the local authority did not plan to do this because it had decided on the two options to which I have referred. I queried whether such a decision was democratic and stated that a little care and compassion for the people concerned would not go astray but to no avail. I asked which person had made the decision and was told that such information could not be divulged because it was confidential. This attitude is becoming more prevalent in public services. We are told the information we seek is confidential.

The reality is that, in the 21st century, we care less for the elderly than before. We pretend to care more but we actually care less and are prepared to do less to accommodate people with particular needs at particular points in their lives, which is disgraceful. At some stage, our society will be judged by all and sundry on the way in which it treats people who are in need at any given time. We have spoken about this issue in this House on several occasions in the past and I do not know why it has not sunk in. I am aware that every Minister has the best intentions and hopes to wake people in the public services but a serious wake-up call is required because some schemes are being operated solely on an economic basis. The tap is turned off at a certain point and certain people lose out. What happened to concern and care for the individual? What about the individual's needs? Do they take precedence or are they considered?

I ask the Minister of State, who is a caring and compassionate individual, to make a few phone calls to local authorities and the Health Service Executive and not allow local Deputies to be fobbed off with copies of replies to constituents. Such replies merely tell the constituent that the relevant individual is not prepared to authorise a payment or service. These replies are glib, concise, abrupt, callous, cold and uncaring. We, as public representatives, should not be forced to write back to these people and inform them that they are not the sole arbiters of these issues and that other people have views that are as valid as their views. We should not be forced to do this and revisit the same issues.

Some members of staff in local authorities and the Health Service Executive instruct constituents not to talk to their local Deputy or other politicians because they apparently know nothing about such issues. These are not isolated incidents. I can quote chapter and verse in respect of such incidents which take place around the country. This type of conduct will not continue indefinitely because a change will take place at some point. The people who hide behind what they now see as safety will not hide forever. There are serious problems which must be addressed in either the short or long term because there will be fun in the future if they are not addressed.

Deputy English addressed the adequacy of nursing home subventions, an issue which has been debated for many years but not resolved. I do not know whether we will resolve it because problems will arise as long as a person's home is assessed as means in the process of identifying his or her entitlement to subvention. As Deputy English said, the value of a humble home is sufficient to put people outside the qualifying income limits and, consequently, they get nothing.

I have spoken about a sad situation in the context of another Bill, that is, a family member who lives with one of his or her parents and may have joint ownership of the family home, which is included in the arbitrary assessment. The junior member of the family will inherit the home, but to ensure he or she does not inherit easily, a bureaucrat somewhere has decided to assess the person on half the value of the family home, which could be €250,000 or €300,000 depending on its location. As a result, that person is burdened.

What can he or she do? Such people talk to us, we make representations, bureaucrats decide to give responses, if "response" is the proper description, and the situation continues. Sometimes, representatives only receive replies to queries a year later. Ministers must accept responsibility for these matters. Were I a Minister in a Department that treated people in this way, I would go mad, as would anyone in the House. The time has come to put care, feeling and humanity into how some applications are dealt with. A little bit would go a long way.

Caring at home has been mentioned. Times and the economy have changed considerably and it is not always as easy to care for people at home as it used to be. However, there are people who are willing to do so where it is possible. I welcome the improvement in respect of the carer's allowance, but it could be improved further because many people do not qualify for various reasons.

Building an adjacent structure to a house can be helpful in some cases. I can cite a classic example of how daft bureaucracy can be. A man decided to build an extension to his home when his mother-in-law arrived to live with his family, who was a young woman at the time. The extension was an upstairs conversion above a garage or something similar. After some time, the woman was not as mobile as she used to be and it was decided to apply for planning permission for a downstairs extension. The family applied to the local authority and was refused five times. Why? Planning permission was bad enough in the past, so why do people adopt and stand over such stances? The case was made that the woman was not as mobile as she used to be, the circumstances had changed and no law would have been broken if permission had been granted.

On disabled persons' grants and nursing homes, one must weigh the alternatives. There was a tendency, and some evidence indicates it remains the case, that to qualify for the disabled persons' grant, such modifications would need to be made to the house as to make it impossible for a reconversion after the disabled person left without razing it to the ground.

For example, a ramp would stretch diagonally across a garden from the front gate to the front door. I cannot understand why anyone would design this, as it is wrong in two ways. First, it gives a signal to potential burglars that a disabled person lives in the house. Second, it is dangerous because it is a diagonal construction across a rectangular plot. Anyone who knows about health and safety matters would know what this means. Imagine what it would be like for an abled person to walk in the front gate after drinking two or three jars in the local pub. It is crazy. It would be simple to do a good job without decimating the house. A straight run could be built to a garage or somewhere nearby, a ramp could be enclosed in the garage and no one would see anything.

Another tendency was to tear out the inside of the house or modify it to the extent that to qualify for the grant, it would not be possible to reconvert the house. For example, two walls would be demolished, load-bearing girders would be installed and so on. It was nonsense. Why not simply build an extension to the side of the house?

My last example is as true as I am standing here. In the past four years, a widow applied for a grant to build a downstairs extension because she was suffering from a terminal illness. The usual assessment was carried out by the usual bureaucrats and a port-a-loo was bolted onto her house's gable because it was decided that such would be sufficient to meet her lifetime's requirements. I do not want to shock people, but if any Deputy were to be treated in this way at any stage of his or her life, it would be a sad stage in the country's development. Caring and compassion do not go hand in hand with this attitude. I am referring to these matters to identify the difficult issues facing people who may have the option to be cared for in the community or may be forced into residential care.

My constituency is lucky to have a number of nursing homes, all of which are of high quality and standard and are providing a good service. From time to time, there is an odd glitch. While I am never one to shirk when it comes to telling a person my views on his or her operation and never will be, we should give credit where it is due. Generally, the nursing homes provide a good service. The subventions to date must be examined carefully, but they must keep pace with nursing home charges.

In some quarters, there is a perception that elderly people are a burden on society, that they have worked, earned money and stashed it somewhere and, consequently, their money should be extracted from them by fair means or foul. Deputy English referred to a bank official. I view the matter in another way. For example, persons from a part of the income scale may have worked for their lifetimes, given their best to society, reared their families, built their houses, got and repaid their mortgages and, in many cases, are attempting to repay their children's mortgages, including by remortgaging their own homes. Having done all of this, there may come a time when a bureaucrat must make a decision on whether they will get support, but the qualifying income limits will be a barrier.

These people have paid society, which has not been taken into account in any way. They have carried their burdens, moved along, done their jobs and should not be punished as a consequence. If they had sat idly by and done nothing during their lives, they would be better rewarded. We must respect their lifetime contributions. Instead of evaluating their eligibility for something on the basis of the few euro they have in the bank by the time they reach 80 years or 90 years of age, they should be judged on their contributions to society. Were this factor taken into account, their entitlements to nursing home subventions would be more fairly based. My experiences are similar to those of other people. We come into this House and talk about those experiences, the Minister thinks about what we have said and his officials take notes and discuss what they hear. When the notes are written, the experiences related on all sides of the House are well rounded in the best Irish tradition. They should be taken on board so that reality dawns on those dispensing and administering in this area.

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