Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

I am not scoring any political points but I must point out that the way we treat our elderly people in the health service is disgraceful. We all learned about the issues relating to Leas Cross on television and in the report on the nursing home, but the issue is wider than this. I am talking about elderly people who are made to feel they are burdens on the system. They are described as bed blockers and put under pressure to move out of acute hospitals when there is no place for them to go, when they cannot be looked after at home and when there is no public bed for them and no affordable bed in the private nursing home sector. If this debate tonight, the motion moved on behalf of Fine Gael and the Labour Party and the Minister's response makes a difference to these elderly people, we will have done a good job.

I visited a house last Saturday morning and spoke to the elderly couple who lived there. The wife's brother is a single man who is in an acute hospital. The family is being put under extraordinary pressure to move this man out of the acute hospital setting and into a nursing home which is 15 miles away from his home. The family does not have money and does not have access to public transport. The man does not have children and, having lived his life and contributed to society, he is being treated as a burden on the system. There is no public bed of which he can avail. The nursing home subvention combined with his pension is not adequate to pay for the nursing home to which the acute hospital wishes to shunt him. The family is holding out but is receiving telephone calls every day from the acute hospital asking it when it plans to move this man out of his hospital bed. That is appalling in this day and age and we must take urgent action to deal with it.

Many people find themselves in such a situation. They are being shunted into private nursing homes which they cannot afford. Earlier today in the House, the Taoiseach said that they are being paid for and that this is not happening, but in my area there is a very large gap between the maximum subvention anyone can receive with enhanced subvention plus his or her pension and the cost of nursing homes. The families involved are being put under terrible strain. I wish the Minister would do something about this. I note that in her speech, she declared that she would provide financial support for people needing long-term residential care so that care is affordable.

It is not affordable in my constituency. I received some figures recently. The number of beds in the public system in the western region of the HSE, which ranges from Donegal down through Deputy Connaughton's constituency to my constituency, is 2,235. This number must cater for all dependent elderly people in the west, which has a very high population of such people. This is simply unacceptable.

We depend on the private sector. We do not provide enough subvention. The private sector essentially aims to make money although I acknowledge that there are some very good private nursing homes. I have had experience of such homes through witnessing the care given to members of my family. However, these nursing homes do not have the staff to cater for many very dependent elderly people who are being pushed into these homes. As a nation and a society, we must provide the necessary public funding that will provide publicly-funded beds for those elderly dependent people who do not have money of their own and who do not have immediate family with money of their own. Many of these cases involve single people who do not have children who can take the slack in terms of cost.

I hope the Minister addresses this issue, which is one of the most serious issues in the health system. I have not referred in detail to the specific issue raised by the Leas Cross report in the amount of time available to me, but what took place in Leas Cross is a symptom of what is happening. We have become very dependent on private nursing homes to deal with our elderly people and are essentially relying on the profit motive to address the needs of our elderly people in our public health care system, which is wrong. We need to redress the balance and provide public beds. I hope the Minister provides public beds with proper public finance to look after our elderly people. This is essentially the kind of health care that the Labour Party stands for, will fight for and, if elected to Government, will implement.

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