Seán Power (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)

Tonight's motion deals with nursing home care for the elderly. Having served in the Department for a period as a Minister of State with responsibility for services for older people, I have a particular interest in tonight's debate. During my time in the Department a policy decision was made to introduce the fair deal scheme. The scheme was an honest attempt to deal with what has been a difficult situation. As public representatives, we are all familiar with the difficulties many families encountered when their loved ones were forced to move to private nursing home care. Even in cases where the application for subvention might have been successful there was always a shortfall that had to be met. For many families it was like taking on a second mortgage. It is difficult enough to have a loved one moving out of home into nursing home care - it is a big decision for a family to allow someone else to look after a parent, other family member or relative - but the financial burden that often went with that was an enormous challenge for many families.

As the Minister outlined last night, since the fair deal scheme was introduced more than 16,500 applied and more than 12,250 people were approved. It is welcome to see such a level of take up. One criticism of the scheme however is that people are encountering hidden charges. They go into care on the understanding that their medical and accommodation needs - bed and board - will be looked after, but there are charges for activation programmes, incontinence wear and even laundry services. Those are basic requirements that one would assume would be included. It is important that in future patients and their families know exactly what they are paying for when they go into a nursing home.

We have introduced a number of measures. HIQA has responsibility for the inspections that take place. The quality and standard of nursing homes has improved throughout the country. The regulations on the registration of nursing homes and the care and welfare of residents has resulted in a significant improvement. RTE exposed some of the terrible treatment patients in nursing homes had to endure. That forced the Government to take action.

I single out one Member of the House for the role he played and the interest he took in nursing homes. As a result of the good, solid groundwork he did we took action and brought about a number of improvements. I refer to Deputy Fergus O'Dowd who is not present tonight. I was on the receiving end of his contributions on a number of occasions but as an Opposition spokesperson he served a great purpose at the time.

The setting up of the Office of the Ombudsman was a progressive development. I felt very uneasy while watching the television debate a few nights' ago where the Ombudsman and the Minister for Health and Children were at loggerheads. One would assume the two of them would have the same goal and would be working towards improving the lot of older people. Perhaps we can learn from the Ombudsman's report and that in future we will see greater co-operation between the Department and the Office of the Ombudsman.

The Minister indicated that the budget this year in respect of long-term care for the fair deal scheme and for those remaining in public long-stay facilities and receiving subvention in private facilities would be more than €979 million. Regardless of what is said, unless we deal with the financial crisis we will not be able to provide that level of funding in future years.

I have never seen the public so despondent and angry as they are at present. They have almost lost hope. This country is facing a serious financial crisis. The people are crying out for leadership. Just like the markets they want to be assured that the Government has a credible plan to get us out of this hole. People deserve to be given the full facts and to get an explanation of the exact position we are in, no matter how bad it is. At this stage people are prepared to make the sacrifices and they are expecting the worst. We cannot continue treating people they way we have done. We often speak about our educated electorate, yet on occasion we treat them like fools.

Last week was a poor one for the Government. We failed the people and treated them as if they could not understand the complexities of the financial situation. We engaged in a game of semantics. We started trying to play a cute game about words and what they meant or might mean instead of using the opportunity presented to us following a number of statements on television and radio about the state of the nation and the difficulties we are experiencing. We should have taken that opportunity to explain to people the nation's problems and the way in which we were trying to tackle them. It was the least the people deserved.

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