Dáil debates

Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Financial Resolution No. 15: (General) Resumed

 

1:00 pm

Photo of James ReillyJames Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

Well done. This must be one of the worst budgets in living memory. Not only has the Minister, Deputy Lenihan, left the legacy of the Lenihan levy, but he will be long remembered as the man who, along with the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney, who took the medical card off sick, old, frail and terminally ill pensioners. The stark fact is that 139,000 people qualified for the non-means tested medical card and if the Government has its way, only 14,000 will remain eligible for the medical card in January. This means some 125,000 people stand to lose their medical card. These people are elderly, suffer from chronic illness and are on long-term medication. They have worked all their lives, served the country and this is what the Celtic tiger hands them back.

This comes at a time when the elderly have seen their pensions obliterated by the turmoil in international markets, due, in some part, to the ineptitude of the Government's management of the economy over the past years. It also comes at a time when some 125,000 frail, elderly people in the country who, through the Minister for Health and Children's ineptitude, have no help with long-term nursing home care. Home care packages have been slashed too.

The Minister, Deputy Harney, promised in the Chamber in December 2007 to publish the fair deal legislation before Christmas. She promised again in January that it would be published before Easter. At Easter she promised it before summer, during the summer she promised us it would be published this semester and now we are told it will be published tomorrow. When will it come into law and when will people actually get relief?

People are crucified paying €50,000 per year. Now, to rub salt into the wounds of those families and elderly people, it is the Government's intention to reduce the tax rate from the marginal rate to the standard rate. Heretofore, if one was paying €50,000 per year, one received €20,000 tax back, but now one will only receive €10,000. This is an extraordinary attack on the elderly and makes a mockery of the Taoiseach and the Government's contention that they will protect the vulnerable, the frail and the elderly. We will see to what extent they will do this when examining other aspects of the budget.

The Taoiseach also told us earlier today that the fall in income tax allowance will not really matter because every one will have the fair deal by next year. There are several issues with this claim. Not every one will have access to the fair deal, because it will be capped according to the budget plan. The allocation was set at €110 million last year and it has now been capped at €55 million this year, which is half the original amount. Why is this and how many people will be able to avail of it? The families unable to avail of it will find themselves penalised by the Government from the tax aspects of the budget. Such people will find they are paying more and more. There are several other aspects of the budget which are hitting families struggling at present to mind their elderly, care for their young and disabled and to pay their mortgages.

We are being asked to believe that the fair deal will be introduced next year by a Minister who told us in January 2007 there would be no health cuts. The same Minister, Deputy Harney, later admitted there would be health cuts but claimed these would not affect patients. We have all seen what has happened. Operations have been cancelled throughout the country. The situation in accident and emergency departments is such that there are 20% more people lying on trolleys now than there was this month last year. This is despite the assertion that accident and emergency departments were in crisis and they would be addressed.

The HSE works under the Minister for Health and Children and takes its ethos from her and from the Government. This is the ethos that allowed the HSE in the north east to do nothing until May 2008 about thousands of mis-read X-rays that it knew of in September 2007. There may have been ten or 20 of those people with tumours growing in their lungs since September 2007. It waited eight months. If the mother or brother of the Acting Chairman was such a patient, he would not wait eight months, but the HSE believes it is kosher to do so. This is the same organisation that left 97 files belonging to women in Portlaoise dumped in a corner until it deemed a cohort was reached and it could proceed to deal with people who might have breast cancer. This is the same organisation which takes home care packages off disabled children. This is the same organisation and Minister which takes home help hours off the elderly and which presides over a system where people with cystic fibrosis die ten years earlier in this country than 50 miles north of here.

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