John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this matter on the Adjournment. For many elderly citizens who see their home help as a lifeline to some comfort in the autumn of their lives, this issue is critical. The security of knowing there is someone there for them on a regular basis improves their health and well-being and is as good as or better than a lot of the medicines they might take. There is a social dimension to the home help visit which impacts positively on the physical condition of the recipient.

Allowing thousands of elderly people to stay in their own homes with the support provided saves the State money by freeing up costly beds in hospitals and nursing homes and is also the policy of the Government. However, as result of the drastic reduction in the number of home help hours, the Government is not making adequate resources available to implement its own policy and in so doing will cost the State millions of euro in the future. If matters stay as they are, many of the people concerned will end up in acute beds in district hospitals or nursing homes.

In my constituency of Mayo 50,000 hours were targeted to be cut in 2010. The HSE advises that anyone who needs home help will not be denied, but once the criteria for what constitutes a need are changed, it will be able to come up with any figure it wants to justify it. Most people who had had their hours reduced in recent months after a review had been given the all-clear less than nine months ago. If they were approved then, why has the position changed since? The truth is that the well-being of elderly citizens is at the bottom of the agenda and the only show in town is cutting the services available to the most vulnerable in society.

I will give a couple of examples to highlight the unfairness being visited on some of my constituents as a result of the cut in home help hours allocated. An 87 year old lady who is bent to the ground with arthritis and totally dependent on her home help for everything had the time cut from one hour a day to 45 minutes twice a week. Her home help is expected or entitled to walk out after 45 minutes, even though it takes 1.5 hours to do all that is needed to be done, especially when she is visited only twice a week. Let me add that the home help is providing that service on a voluntary basis.

Another person in my constituency who has Alzheimer's disease and is living on her own has had her home help hours cut from five per week to 2.5. Her home help is greeted with human faeces around the house, yet she is not allowed to do any housework or cleaning. The new criteria are so stringent that they are in no way capable of taking account of the human cases dealt with.

The concept of providing home help for elderly people in need of care living in their own home is a good one. However, because of the inadequate resources provided to implement the scheme, it now poses a threat to the well-being of the very people it sets out to protect. The Ombudsman stated earlier this week that the State had failed for many years to provide people with their legal right to nursing home care. If the issue of cutbacks in home help hours is not addressed immediately, it is inevitable the same conclusion will be reached as regards the care of the elderly in their homes.

See this speech in context