Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

How can he square the respect he has expressed for home helps with the outsourcing of home care services to a multinational company that wants to pay home helps by the minute? Does he think somebody who is paid by the minute - who has to clock in according to the minute and has to leave after exactly 15 or 30 minutes - will give the sort of service that is required to the elderly or disabled citizen he or she is supposed to be looking after? The priority of private multinational companies in this sector is to make money out of the disabled and the elderly, rather than to provide them with services or to treat the workers who provide those services with the respect they need. I ask the Taoiseach to reverse the cuts in home help hours. He can get savings from the consultants who are doing private work in public hospitals and are paid obscenely high public salaries. Further moneys can be saved by cutting the prices that are paid to multinational companies. That should be done instead of attacking the elderly, the disabled, the most vulnerable people in our society and the workers who provide these services, who are already inadequately paid for the vital work they do.

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