Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I fully accept that. That was the point I was trying to make. I realise the Deputy is not doing this on his own, that it is a wider issue. Equally, however, if we are to care for the percentage of older people who will eventually need the type of long-term care we are now providing we must look at things in a completely different way. If one looks at any of the surveys, people will state they want to stay in their own community. They want to live not only their active life but the end of their life in their own community. There will always be people who will need the acute and ongoing care which exists at present in the hospitals the Deputy mentioned. However, we cannot continue providing this care in the same way we always did. We will have to look at alternatives. We have groups of people looking at how we will provide that care in the future in a different way.

This is probably the only area where we have not come up with a five-year plan for the future and we will need to do that. We should be able to forecast how many people will need long-term care in a hospital setting and come up with an appropriate plan for them. However, Deputy Kirk accepts when it comes to the country's finances we are in a very dark place. I accept the people in question are not responsible for this. That is where we are at, however, and we have to look at service provision differently. It can be done. People need to be reassured the provision of hospital services is being examined seriously and not let lapse in some kind of a vacuum.

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