John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt that this budget has singled out senior citizens for a range of cuts. Many of these cuts have been hidden in the fine print of this budget. Whether it is a change of regulation or a change of qualification rule, there have been cuts. Deputy Nolan made a suggestion, and I support him in it, that we should visit older people and that people outside of this House should be encouraged to do so also within communities.

I visit older people. To take away from some of the statements that have been made by Ministers and some backbenchers and apply some reality, I will tell the House what I find in their homes. When they apply for grants to the county council to do something minor to make their house reasonably accessible, they cannot get it because there is no money. When the older person in hospital is being discharged, there is no money to refurbish the house. They are stuck in a hospital and they cannot come home to their families. I came across a case where a woman and her disabled daughter have not been able to get accommodation with their other sister simply because there is no money to carry out the refurbishment works.

There is then the case of the medical cards. We have had all the changes with the budget. People are suffering and medical cards are being withdrawn from older people but what happened before the budget? We had what they call a random check. Every Member on the opposite side of the House must know from their clinics that there was nothing random about it. It was a cull of medical cards from the elderly, an attempt to take those cards and not give them back for one reason or another.

The son of a 90 year old woman in my constituency went to the chemist and it was only then that he was told that the medical card had been taken from his mother. Only yesterday, a couple went to the chemist and without any notification their medical card had been taken. That is not a lack of communication. That is complete chaos within the Health Service Executive, HSE. It is a misunderstanding of the problem at the political level because the HSE has a political leadership within the Department of Health, and that political leadership should be showing the way.

I point the Minister to the hospital waiting list. I listened here the other day to a Minister telling us that there were no trolleys in the corridors. The Government must have its head stuck in the sand because there are trolleys in corridors. Again, in my region, all of the cases for senior citizens looking for hip and knee replacements or cataract operations were sent to Cappagh hospital. They were told they would be fast-tracked and prioritised but do the Members opposite know what happened after a few months? All of the files were sent back down to Waterford, and the people were told to rejoin the waiting list but they have been on the waiting list for six years.

Members make the accusation that this was all Fianna Fáil's fault. They are in power since 2011. They got a mandate from the Irish people and they have totally ignored that mandate. The message they are sending out about the past is now being rubbished not by us on this side of the House, but by the general public who are getting fed up listening to that message.

All of the issues that have been addressed by my colleagues here are real issues that the Government will have problems with in terms of the care of the elderly. The prescription charge, the bereavement grant and the DIRT are all sneaky cuts that will make life miserable for older people who are already living in fear-----

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