John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I compliment Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin on tabling the motion. It gives us an opportunity to raise some of the issues affecting older people in our communities. Today, I received a large number of letters from the Older and Bolder organisation. The first few words of each letter sums up what older people want. They state that they want to grow old at home. They outline the cuts in home care services and ask if they make human or economic sense. The cuts will result in earlier admission to nursing homes, longer stays in acute hospitals and anguish for families who need support in caring at home for relatives suffering from illness, frailty or disability.

As public representatives, particularly in rural areas, we are aware of the importance of the home help service to older people. It enables people to live at home and remain in the community. This is the annual magician story from the Health Service Executive that it will cut €8 million from the home help service budget and remove 450,000 home help hours, but it will not affect the home help service. It also talks about efficiencies. Perhaps the Minister of State would ascertain from the Health Service Executive what it means by efficiency. I meet the Health Service Executive every three or four months with my Oireachtas colleagues in Wexford and it continues to tell us that home help and hospital services are good and the community service is good, yet we get hundreds of complaints monthly from older people owing to the lack of services.

At any given time in Wexford General Hospital, up to ten people occupy beds when they would much prefer to go home. However, they cannot go home because no home help service is available. Community nurses in Wexford have told me there is no hope of getting home help between now and Christmas unless the person who has it currently passes away. That is disgraceful. Perhaps the Minister of State would explain tomorrow night the reason home help service in some areas in inadequate while in other areas it is not too bad. It appears there is an allocation of moneys on a county per county basis but some are faring much better than others. Given the Minister's cutbacks in the home help area, there will be no moneys available for home help between now and Christmas. It is not good enough for the Health Service Executive to say it will work on efficiencies and save money elsewhere, yet it does not spell out how it will do it.

Home help is a very important service for older people. Older people want to remain in the community and live at home. Perhaps in urban areas the next door neighbour will look in occasionally to check if an older person is well. Out in the rural heartland, however, there could be a distance of five to ten miles between where people reside. In such instances, it is important that home help is available to people.

We all accept there is a financial difficulty in the country. There is also a financial difficulty owing to the Minister not fighting his cause at the budget table last year, resulting in the inadequate moneys being available to the HSE.

To start making cutbacks affecting the most vulnerable people in our society is completely unacceptable. As Deputy Catherine Byrne said, this decision should be revisited. There is no chance of the HSE carrying out an assessment of the number of people at present in receipt of home help between now and Christmas to ascertain who is entitled to it - that is not good enough. The money needs to be restored as quickly as possible to provide adequate home help to the people who need it. I support the Sinn Féin motion and hope some common sense will prevail within the HSE and with the Minister, Deputy Reilly.

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