Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We are all agreed it is vital that citizens who require home help hours and home care packages get the hours and service they are entitled to expect in any decent society. Home help services and packages are a lifeline to some of the most vulnerable members of our community. This year, 10.7 million hours of home help support will be provided in communities from Louth to Limerick and Donegal to Dingle. This compares favourably with the number of hours allocated in 2006 at the height of the boom.

My admiration and respect for the critical work done by those who care for older people and those with various needs in the community is beyond measure. We often forget about those who deliver the services on the ground day in and day out. The home help services are the Cinderella of the Irish health system. The work of the home helps has never been formally recognised by the HSE. It is effectively undervalued and ignored. The heroes and heroines of the service, the home helps themselves, have been disrespected and devalued by the HSE since 2007. They have no basic contract or agreed hours. In essence, those who are engaged by the HSE do not enjoy the protections and supports provided to those HSE staff governed by the Croke Park agreement. It is high time this wrong was put right by the HSE and that there was meaningful engagement to deal with those issues.

Turning to the content of the motion, it is said a person can only be called a hypocrite if he judges others first. There is no shortage of inhabitants of the high moral ground among the Members opposite. They are always ready to judge the actions of others, but the Members opposite do not come to this debate with clean hands. Sinn Féin's record of government in the North is pockmarked with hypocrisy and failure when it comes to health and social services.

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