Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

This statistic should frighten us all.

The people who gave us the Celtic tiger, who supported my generation and that of the Acting Chairman, the officials and the Minister, are those who gave us the wealth and higher standard of living we have enjoyed in the past few years. That same group of people scrimped and saved and put together a mortgage and bought a home. They paid their taxes and now they are expected to pay again. This is outrageous.

There are mixed messages in the community. Families are asking when the fair deal scheme will be put in place because they are desperate. I know of one particular family with a mortgage and small children and they are paying out €120 a week to support their mother, whom they love. When will the fair deal be put in place? That type of desperation should be considered and analysed far more deeply because it is very clearly a result of the position they have been put in and they can see no other alternative. However, there used to be an alternative. While the county homes had a bad reputation, they were places where the elderly could go and be cared for, but we allowed that to slip away from us. We did not continue to build on that system in order to provide for the elderly who could no longer look after themselves at home. We allowed that to slip away so we are now the middleman, the bag woman, the banker, and we will pay others to look after our elderly. Such people do an excellent job in the main.

However, we should ensure that the standards we would expect for ourselves are put in place under this legislation. I am concerned about one provision which is not in the Bill as I have personal experience of such circumstance. I refer to where the principal care giver should not be the owner of the nursing home, in other words, that a GP providing care for an elderly person in a nursing home should not be the owner of the nursing home. He or she should be completely independent of the home. This is an important point.

How we have treated our elderly will in the future create the same type of scandal as the industrial schools and that is why standards are important. The first important piece of legislation dealing with the elderly should not be about how we take money from them in order to pay for their care. Rather, it should relate to the type of care and standards.

Those who gather statistics tell me that our generation will be the first in which 80% of people will inherit. Farmers and shopkeepers inherited and they felt it to be their right, but inheriting was never the case from where I came. However, it is the case where I now live. Those who scrimped and scraped, paid their taxes and reared and put homes around their children are to be penalised a second time.

The notion of treating any sector of society differently because of age is repugnant to the Constitution and will be challenged. Those who lobby on behalf of the elderly will be reluctant to challenge it because there is no apparent alternative. The notion is repugnant to the Constitution in the same way that I cannot be discriminated against because I am a woman. While it occurs every day of the week, I have the protection of the law. Someone cannot be treated differently because he or she is of a particular age. The Bill is wrong and families should not need to clamour for it simply because there is nothing else.

We all know elderly people who should be at home. I am not saying otherwise. We all know families that, with a little bit of extra effort, could look after their parents at home. We know families that put themselves under significant strain to look after their elderly parents at home. This is what society is about, the good and the bad. When I see how vulnerable groups are treated, I despair. The elderly are not just dependent or do not just need care. Rather, they are vulnerable and we should ensure their protection and care, but we are not doing so.

The Minister of State can discuss the great things that occurred in the past ten years, but the manner in which we looked after vulnerable sectors of society was not part and parcel of it. In the past ten years, the incomes of those in their mid-60s and mid-70s did not increase by 20% and their standard of living did not increase by 50%. A good aspect of being in their position is that their standard of living will not now reduce dramatically.

We have an obligation to those who went before us, were lucky enough to survive to reach old age and contributed to ensuring that our standard of living and health care improved, allowing us to survive into old age. When we legislate for the elderly, we legislate for ourselves. With any luck, we will be there. This legislation is not good enough and someone with sufficient courage will challenge it successfully. Like now, we should have built on what we had. We forgot and left it to the private sector, as we did with health care and everything else. The State has become the bag man in the middle, which is not what a state or a republic is about. One group should not be set against another, but the Government is doing that.

It is good that we have encouraged women to return to the workforce, but we have not provided them with child care services or their parents with facilities to stay at home. This is not discussed anymore, nor is civic responsibility or the rights of citizens, the matter in question. There is no need to categorise people in different little pigeon holes. All that is necessary is proper protection and rights for each citizen, but the Government considers it right and proper to factionalise matters and to set one group against another. It is wrong that the Bill is part and parcel of the problem. A broad-ranging discussion on our treatment of the elderly is necessary instead of this narrow Bill.

The Minister of State, the Acting Chairman and I know of people aged in their early 70s whose houses will suddenly be signed over. We know it will occur because it occurred previously. Health authorities have been forced to do unthinkable things to families. One woman I know went into a nursing home. She has all of her senses, but she is not physically well. The HSE has insisted that her house be rented out. It has calculated how much rent it can earn. The woman is determined to return home, but she will not be able to do so if another family is living in her house. She knows this as well as we do. The HSE believes that she can get €1,100 per month from the house to go towards her care. People may be elderly, physically unwell and need to be minded, but they are not stupid. Sometimes, we treat them as if they are stupid.

When we legislate for a group for the first time, we should ensure that we will not need to revert to the matter quickly. It would take time and legislation with a broader scope than is to be found in this Bill.

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