Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I have raised on a number of occasions the issue on home helps in the Kildare-west Wicklow area. A total of 800 home helps do not receive travel expenses. I have tabled numerous parliamentary questions on this matter. The replies I received indicated that home helps in other areas are paid these expenses directly through the Health Service Executive and through voluntary organisations. I am delighted this is happening, but why can the same not apply to home helps in the Kildare-west Wicklow area?

I have been told by letter that an exercise is currently in progress to establish entitlements on an individual basis to travel expenses and to make arrangements for the payment of same. That has been ongoing since before Christmas but no progress has been made in resolving the matter. Although we have computers we do not seem to be able to make progress in this regard.

Parts of Kildare and west Wicklow are very rural. As a result, most home helps have to travel and they have significant costs in terms of petrol and car maintenance in order to provide their service to people in the community every day. There has been a reduction in the number of home help hours provided to people and this has resulted in more house calls being made by each home help. This puts more pressure on the vehicles of home helps and increases the cost factor.

The voluntary organisations appear to be able to pay such expenses but the HSE, in spite of PPARS and the other computer systems, is not able to pay people. The latest reply I received from Eastern Community Works, ECW, in Kildare, which acts as paymasters to process payment for salaries only to home helps, indicated that the payment system used by ECW is limited in so far as it does not have the same capacity or flexibility as the HSE computer payments system. Why are payments not transferred to the HSE computer system if it has the capacity to deal with them? Why deprive these people who provide such a service?

Given that each home help probably helps up to five or six people, up to 2,000 people could be in receipt of home help assistance in County Kildare. In spite of the great work they do, these people have not been provided with expenses in recent years. This is the case despite the fact that ordinary voluntary organisations in other areas can provide a facility to pay these expenses.

I urge the Minister of State, for the sake of common sense, not to isolate these people who provide such a valuable service. We must ensure that if the ECW is not in a position to provide the computer service that is required to calculate and ensure home helps get their money, then payments will be transferred to the main HSE computer in Millennium Park. We must ensure payments are made. It is naturally wrong that home helps in all other areas can get expenses, but not in Kildare and west Wicklow. It is not logical to deprive one group of this payment, given the service they are giving and the need for proper transport. Travel expenses would go toward ensuring the service could continue to be provided.

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