Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The position taken by the Minister, Deputy James Reilly, on this issue is absolutely untenable. He seems to have no concept of the distress and misery that has been visited on older people as a consequence of the changes he introduced. The impact of cuts in the provision of home help hours and home care packages are being felt today and every day for at least the past two weeks. People have lost precious home help hours and more are losing them every day. Almost 1 million home help hours will have been cut between last December and the end of this year, on the Minister's watch.

How can the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and her colleagues stand over a situation where an allocation of 15 minutes of home help is described as a service? During a short stay in Cork last week I met home help providers in Youghal and Cork city who are incensed by the cutbacks, as they demonstrated last Saturday by way of a major mobilisation which assembled at Connolly Hall in the city the Minister of State knows so well.

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