Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government will not be opposing the motion, rather it supports it. If there was a suggested Government amendment to it, it would probably relate to the last point of the motion which states "agrees that the elderly should not be used as just economic statistics". Perhaps that wording should be amended to include the words "and should not also be used as political footballs". If there was a Government amendment to the motion, I would support one along that line.

The two critical lines in the motion are those referring to the elderly living lives independently and with dignity and the concerns that arise regarding isolation and illness as people grow older. I am fortunate that my parents are still alive. My father will be 90 year of age next month and my mother is a lot younger than him. I dare not mention her name and put it on the record of the Dáil for fear of the retribution I might get on leaving the House. I have been fortunate in that they live in the house in which they have lived for the past 50 years and they have been able to do so because of the types of supports elderly people get in this State.

If an element has been absent from the debate, it is examining new thinking as to how we can support people, not only the measures that have been put in place to date and which were discussed in the budget debate.

One of the great absences of the developer-led years when Fianna Fáil was in government, and we had a developer-led government, was that housing strategy did not take account of the full life cycle that Deputy Regina Doherty mentioned. There were not structured down-sizing programmes in the housing developments that were built. We had housing estate after housing estate, three-up and three-down or four-up and four-down, being built with no opportunity for people as they got older to downsize and continue to live in their community. From my experience of having served on Cork City Council, I know that downsizing projects work when the downsized units are available in the community in which the people have lived and in that way people continue to go to the same credit union, church, shop and use the same bus services. Unfortunately because of the bubble years created by Fianna Fáil, downsizing programmes were usually located many miles form the communities in which people had lived for 40 or 50 years. In debating this motion on the elderly we should focus on how we create a society that is not only about the provision of social welfare benefits but about the community as a whole and how we treat our elderly into the future.

I am concerned about one aspect of the motion which states, "concurs that older people do not want to be pressurised about means tests and application forms for health care services". There are two issues in that statement. The first is the simple plain language used in any form that is issued by the HSE or any other body. This issue arose last year when Revenue issued a letter to every elderly person in the State, only for Revenue to discover that it did not relate to the vast majority of people to whom it was issued. However, that was not discovered until one read the end of the letter. It would have been helpful if that letter issued by Revenue had stated that if one was earning under such an amount or if one's old age pension plus one's private pension is below this amount, please disregard this letter and do not read any further. There is the issue of the language State agencies use in engaging with all people, not only the elderly, which can be confusing, distressful and create anguish.

The other issue in the statement in the motion to which I referred is that it seems to offer a blanket approach. We have seen Fianna Fáil return to adopting a blanket approach to economics again. It was wrong to give a blanket medical card cover to all people over 70 years of agree, regardless of their income. That was a wrong decision. The idea that a retired Taoiseach, and we have many of them from the years Fianna Fáil was in power, who is nearing pension age and on a pension that is immense would qualify for a medical card on reaching the age of 70, simply on the grounds of being 70 years of age, is crazy. It was a crazy approach but it was type of blanket approach Fianna Fáil took to the economy at the time but that has been rightly corrected in this budget.

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