Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The echo from Deputy Enda Kenny at the time was shame on the then Government, with regard to the change from automatic entitlement to a medical card for those aged over 70 to a means test which set the benchmark at €1,400 per week. This has been reduced to €900 per week for a couple, which is having a devastating impact on older people. Day in and day out people highlight they are losing their medical cards. They are being stripped of them by the thousand. In the past month alone approximately 7,000 medical cards have been taken from those aged over 70. They tell me quite clearly they feel betrayed with regard to what was said and the commitments made some time ago and what is being done now. Most of these people must pay the first €144 per month for medicines and medication, which is having a huge impact on the quality of life of many people. Coupled with the gratuitous insult to older people that they must wait up to 15 weeks to be cared for in a nursing home, it is an indication the words shouted on Molesworth Street four years ago were not words of passion but weasel words, because nothing in Government policy over recent years indicates it cares one whit for older people.

While the Government set great store by the fact that it maintained the rate of pension payment, all the ancillary services have been denuded and cut away. The cull of medical cards at an alarming rate indicates the Government has lost any compassion it had in terms of looking after older people in their time of need.

I was going to speak about the problems of the country's changing demographics. In coming years the number of people aged over 65 will grow exponentially - the age cohort that will need nursing home support. On average, 4% of the population will require nursing home support at some stage. We are well off that mark in terms of ensuring we have enough nursing home beds in coming years to cater for the increased demand. There seems to be no strategic planning to increase the number of nursing home beds. The audits on public nursing homes, which need to comply with HIQA guidelines by 2016, indicate that the vast majority of them will not meet those guidelines. Up to 90% of them will not quality given the requirement for single or dual occupancy with en suiteservices and facilities, which is not available in public nursing homes at present.

Major capital investment is required in coming years. However, my immediate concern is that the Government cannot even plan for the week ahead or the month ahead. It certainly did not plan for this year in the budget the Dáil passed last year. We repeatedly highlighted that the amount of money available for the nursing home support scheme would not be able to sustain the level of demand for this year. That has been proved by the figures I have outlined - we now have more than 2,100 waiting for 15 weeks.

I know that the Minister of State, who responsibility for older people, does not want to see this happening. We tabled the motion tonight to ensure that the senior Minister and his Cabinet colleagues will provide the necessary funding. That can be done by prioritising within the budgets already set. One could even leave aside the impact it has on an individual and just look at it coldly and clinically from the point of view of the impact it has on the acute hospital system and the fact that 700 people are in hospital beds throughout the country who cannot be discharged because no step-down or nursing home facilities are available to them.

Last night Cork University Hospital had over 60 people who should and would have been discharged but that there was nowhere for them to go. At the same time there are queues at outpatient appointment clinics and for elective surgery. Every week those numbers escalate at an alarming rate. The throughput in our acute hospitals is being stymied because of the inability to discharge owing to the lack of step-down and nursing home facilities. Even if the Minister of State were to park the compassionate and humanitarian side and to look at it coldly, clinically and dispassionately, the Government is pursuing a false policy.

I do not expect the Minister of State to come defend the previous Minister. However, last year the Government decided that the budget would be capped at a lower rate than applied in 2013. By dint of that decision the Government was certain to find itself in the position in which we now find ourselves. It was foretold well in advance. All the Minister of State needed to do was to look at the demographic trends. Anyone should have known that we would be facing a crisis in October, November and December this year. However, it is not the Government that is facing the crisis, but rather the older people who depend on the State. These people, who have made a contribution and will also make a contribution to that care through the fair deal, are the ones who are in crisis. They are the people who are suffering most. If no more comes of this Private Members' motion tabled by the Fianna Fáil Deputies, at least the Minister of State should go back to her Cabinet colleagues and point out that she can no longer stand over what is happening to people every day in terms of supports for people who now need them.

When we look at what the Government has done in other areas of supports for older people, while the words are expressed eloquently and there seems to be a compassionate verbal outlook, nothing in the Government's policy convinces me other than it has prioritised other groupings that do not need the State's support as much as older people over those who need it. While it is a harsh thing for me to say, when I come in here every week I genuinely believe that the Government, particularly the Fine Gael element of it, seems to be focused on focus groups and poll results to find out where it will alleviate the burden on people and where it will place additional burdens. It seems that older people have fallen into the category of "to hell with them" based on the Government's policies across all Departments. Deputy Sean Fleming just spoke about this in the social welfare area as well. The Government set great store by the fact that it preserved the level of pension payments, but what about all the secondary benefits and the whittling away of those that were build up over many years?

This motion calls for the 2015 HSE service plan to reverse the reduction in support for the fair deal scheme implemented in 2014 and long-term residential care to be adequately resourced to take account of demographic changes. The Government's terms has approximately 17 months remaining. I know the Minister of State is committed to older people. However, we now need the Minister of State to convince the Cabinet to address immediately two priorities facing us: the 2,100 people waiting for 15 weeks for approval and also the longer-term strategy to ensure that in years ahead, older people will not be waiting a very long time to get a nursing home place - or maybe not able to get a nursing home place at all. We need policies in terms of planning and incentivisation to ensure we have adequate nursing homes in the years ahead.

All the statistics are there and many reports have been carried out by various organisations, some of them with an interest in this area, but others completely impartial and looking at this in a dispassionate way. They highlight the inadequacies in terms of how policy makers act to ensure we will have extra nursing homes in the years ahead.

We did not table this Private Members' motion simply to embarrass a Minister of State and throw a few verbals across the floor. We tabled it because there is a crisis in our communities. Families are at their wits' ends. We have come across families who have had no choice but to place a family member in a nursing home and make the contribution while they are awaiting approval. They are being billed extraordinary sums because they have no choice. That is wrong and it is up to the Minister of State and her Government colleagues to act on that to ensure that adequate funding is provided. We tabled the motion to ensure the reversal of the HSE service plan, which contains all the necessary detail for this area.

That will always highlight the deficiencies of Government policy and the difficulties that will be faced by certain cohorts of the population. Last year was no different. It was evident from the get go that not only would the overall budget be in crisis as the HSE faced a budget deficit of approximately €500 million, but there would be a deficiency of funding under the nursing homes support scheme with large numbers of people having to wait extraordinary durations to be assessed and approved for a nursing home place. That is wrong and unfair. It is inherently indecent to ask people who are often near end of life and their families to go through this trauma . I commend the motion and I hope the Minister at least acts on its spirit to ensure we do not have this problem next year.

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