Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As a care assistant for the past 16 years, the best education I ever got in life was working with the wonderful people I was lucky enough to care for. Sometimes the people in my care were coming to the end of their lives, while others were beginning a long and arduous journey of convalescence and rehabilitation. This gratifying work and life experience, making a positive contribution to people facing life's most serious challenges will always shape my outlook on life. Equally, I will always admire the amazing dedication of my fellow workers, auxiliary staff, nurses and doctors. I very much doubt that any Minister for Health personally likes to see people on trolleys in accident and emergency departments, struggling to get home care packages or waiting for vital operations. However, it is the result of the cruel and unjust political choices of the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government and previous Governments that we find ourselves in this perennial and prolonged crisis in our health service.

The issue I want to raise is that of home help services and the 1 million home help hours that have been cut by the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government since 2011. The Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government had already cut 1 million hours of home help to bail out the banks but the Fine Gael-Labour Government continued with the cuts, attacking some of the most vulnerable workers who look after some of our most vulnerable citizens. Those home care cuts have had a serious and detrimental effect, not only on the recipients of care but also on carers themselves. It is estimated that every year up to 75,000 people need to avail of home help services but, according to the HSE, only 21,000 people are currently benefiting from some sort of package and the number of home care hours will fall by 50,000 this year. As the Government is well aware, the demand for home care packages and home care hours is growing every year because of our ageing population. Cuts to home care packages are not, as is often claimed, a cost-saving exercise. They also serve the Government’s ideological commitment to for-profit provision by private companies. That is a policy of privatisation of public health care and home care. At present there are 50 private for-profit home care providers in Ireland. This market is worth €330 million. These are highly profitable companies that get contracts worth millions of euro per year from the HSE. On the other hand, the salaries of the care workers who actually provide the care average from €10 to €11 an hour while their employer charges over €26 an hour, more than double what the carer gets. This level of profiteering is a waste of public funding and it is it is a shame and a scandal that so many are left without care.

Professor Des O'Neill of Tallaght hospital recently described the cuts to home care as “totally bonkers and self-defeating”. He added "It will cause significant personal distress for frail older people who are prevented from being able to go home in a timely and supported manner, and will also have significant consequences for an already over-loaded hospital system." Professor O’Neill’s sentiments are shared by the majority of health and social care staff, carers and those requiring care. In an age when people would prefer to stay at home rather than have successive and needless stays in hospital, surely we should be funding home care packages as a priority. We need to respect and value the work done by care workers and carers. We need to put an end to the "care-cramming" that forces home care workers to race against the clock through unreasonable time allocations and which places those vulnerable citizens being cared for at risk of injury.

The position in respect of home care is, like those relating to many other social services - such as housing, health care and water supply - in a state of ongoing crisis. Measures urgently required are: employ more care workers in properly paid, permanent jobs with adequate training and support; stop the privatisation of our health system through expensive contracts with for-profit companies; provide medical cards as a minimum to all those receiving long-term care; abolish means testing for carers and improve their carer’s allowance payments and other supports; and publish and fund phase 2 of the national care strategy, setting out a clear plan for carers from 2016 to 2020.

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