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

I propose to share time with Deputies Thomas Pringle, Luke 'Ming' Flanagan and Tom Fleming. The Government has talked continuously about health care reform and its determination to reform the public health service. Some of us believe reform is, for the most part, a euphemism for cuts and austerity. There is no clearer example of where this is the case than what the Government is doing to home helps and home care packages. It is despicable to cut more than 1 million home help hours to the elderly and the disabled, some of our most vulnerable citizens. One cannot call it reform because it is just cuts. Every one of the hours cut will degrade the quality of life of our most vulnerable citizens. It will mean more suffering, more loneliness and more isolation. For many people, it will mean an accelerated move to death. It is despicable, unacceptable and there is no justification for it. The Government should reverse the cuts. It should find the money elsewhere and leave the elderly and the disabled alone.

Given the move to take personal assistants from some of our most disabled citizens, the fact I have heard from parents of some of the most severely disabled children who have had respite hours taken from them, and the cutting of home help hours, I seriously ask what the Government has against the elderly and the disabled. This is not a rhetorical point. The Government seems to be relentlessly targeting them, which is appalling and should stop. I appeal to the Government to reverse the cuts and make it clear that no further cuts will be visited upon this area. I shudder to think what €700 million of further cuts to the health service in the December budget will look like in light of what this has meant for some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Apart from the awfulness of the cuts, I question the economic logic behind them. The Government seeks to outsource these services to private companies, replacing not-for-profit home help providers with for-profit home help providers. An woman in her 80s from Greystones phoned me to explain that she is on a waiting list for public home help services. She is paying €26 an hour to a private home help provider. Public home help providers receive between €12 and €14 per hour. Where is the difference going? It is going into the pockets of private companies, like Comfort Keepers. These are the subsidiaries of multinationals and they see the needs of our elderly and disabled citizens as an opportunity to make money. Setting aside ideological differences in the House, it is unacceptable that the support and health care necessary for our elderly, disabled and sick citizens should be dependent on whether someone can make money from it. It does not make sense from the point of view of the public finances. I urge the Government to lay off home help services and I urge it to protect the not-for-profit home help services and the low paid women workers who work in those services and provide community care.

The Government should stop the drive to put people on the clock. The Taoiseach denied home help workers were being put on the clock but they are. It is dehumanising and is degrading the service. If the Government does not stop, there will be public outcry. The home helps who came into the Dáil and who were on the streets are not going away. They will fight and continue their campaign. The Government should lay off them and back off on these cuts.

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