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

The group of home helps, mostly low paid women workers, whom I brought to the Gallery for Leader's Question two weeks ago will hold a demonstration tomorrow against the Government's moves to cut home help hours and privatise home help services. They decided to hold this protest because they were so furious at the Taoiseach's response to the concerns I raised on their behalf and the way he misrepresented their plight and that of elderly and disabled people for whom they provide services.

The Taoiseach dismissed the idea that home helps are now working on an on-the-clock system, when they are. He also said people who need home help hours are getting them, when huge numbers of home help hours are being cut. A woman contacted my office today to tell me she has been on a waiting list for home help for weeks and now has to pay a private home help company €26 per hour to get the services the Government is not providing for her. That example is at the nub of the issue. Home helps who are working for not-for-profit organisations and earning approximately €12 per hour are being replaced by private companies that are charging €26 per hour.

It gets worse. The person advising the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, was until last year working for Sedexo, the parent company of one of the private home help providers that is benefitting from Government cuts in home help hours and the privatisation of the home help service.

Will the Taoiseach reverse these despicable cuts in home help hours which are being directed at the elderly and disabled in our society? Will he halt the agenda of privatising home help services to the benefit of private companies that see the needs of the elderly and disabled as nothing more than an opportunity to make profit? Will he come out of the bubble of the Dáil tomorrow and meet the home helps when they arrive at the gates of Dáil Éireann and assure them that he is not going to sacrifice their jobs and their service in order to pay back the bankers and speculators who wrecked our economy?

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