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

People Before Profit welcomes the opportunity to discuss supports for people with dementia in the community and to draw attention to the urgent need for resources for them. I have first hand experience in this area as I worked in a hospital ward specifically for patients with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The education and life experience I received there will always shape who I am. The cruelty of dementia is only mirrored by the sheer compassion and love for our loved ones in their final years. Lives that were so fruitful and full of happiness have been taken away by this cruel disease.

However, it beggars belief that Fianna Fáil has tabled this motion this week, after a budget that had, as one newspaper put it, "Fianna Fáil written all over it". Surely the time for Fianna Fáil to show its support for older people in general and people with dementia in particular was last week. Dementia is a condition which requires greater recognition and support, as its incidence is increasing with the increasing age of our population. It is good that more people are living to an older age, but with increasing age comes a need to plan better health and social care services. A study published this year by UCD researchers, the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and others, entitled "I'd Prefer to Stay at Home, But I Don't Have a Choice", reported that:

The present social care approach has not been resourced adequately to meet the actual needs of older people. The HSE are spending less now on home support services than they did in 2008, despite the increase in the numbers of people aged 85 and over and those living with complex conditions such as dementia. Older people cannot access safe, compassionate, individualised and quality care when they need it.

Home help and home care services were top of the list on budget day for support groups such as Age Action Ireland and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland.

The records of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments are equally appalling on this issue. During the years of austerity, cuts to services to pay off bankers' gambling debts Fianna Fáil attacked home help hours by reducing them from 12.63 million hours in 2008 to 11 million hours in 2011. Fine Gael and the Labour Party continued the austerity cuts and slashed home help hours to 9.74 million in 2013. In 2016, the number receiving all home care, that is, both home help hours and home care packages, has still not recovered to the 2008 level, despite the fact that the number of people aged over 65 years and over 85 years has continued to rise.

In 2016, only 63,000 people were receiving home care compared to 64,000 in 2008. Meanwhile the population aged over 65 years has increased by 30%, from 481,00 in 2008 to 624,000 in 2016. As Age Action stated in its budget submission:

Between 2008 and 2012, the number of people receiving home care services (home help and home care packages) fell by nearly 30 per cent (17,138 people). There has been a nearly 30 per cent increase in the population aged 65 and over between 2008 and 2016. ... The evidence clearly points to the needs of many older people going unmet.

The increasing use of for-profit agencies has meant worse conditions for staff and a system of speeded up care which allocates insufficient time for even personal care. It leaves much domestic care undone and dependent on relatives and friends who are often elderly and in poor health themselves.

Clearly, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael stand condemned for targeting the older population with cuts in services and welfare to bail out the rich bankers and developers, who play the tune to which they dance. AAA-PBP would be happy to support a motion proposing to increase the funding of home care, hire more social workers and social care workers, provide home care on a demand-led and needs basis in every area, increase the pension without delay, abolish prescription charges, water charges and property tax, improve the household benefits package or any of a host of other measures that would improve the lives of older people and people with dementia. This motion makes no such practical proposals and hides and denies the responsibility of previous Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, as well as the current Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael coalition. This failure and denial of responsibility by those parties should also be noted.

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