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

I thank the Minister of State for her reply. We talk about the winter initiative. The winter initiative should be over, above and beyond home-care packages and home-help hours. That should be systemic in terms of delivery of care. We already know that large numbers of people are presenting in the accident and emergency departments of our acute hospitals day in and day out, particularly during the winter period, because people do not have access to community services, out-of-hours GP services, proper home-care packages or sufficient home-help hours. With all of that, we consistently seem to be of the view that when there is a shortage in budgets, we fund the acute side and diminish the capacity of the primary care and community care services, which is why we continually have difficulties in our hospitals. I am concerned that we use the winter initiative to dolly up announcements towards the tail end of the year when there should be systemic investment in this area as part of planning for the future in terms of demographic changes, the changing population and associated challenges.

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