Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach outlined a litany of processes which patently did not work in this case. In the past couple of days, there have been alarming regarding nursing home care in the State. We read in one Sunday newspaper that older people were billed for activities in which they did not participate. There is no comparable package to fair deal to allow people to remain at home even though it has been promised for a very long time. The ongoing scandal of delays in access to home care packages - delays which are estimated to be costing €18 million according to the Department of Finance - can surely be resolved.

To return to the Devereaux case - those of us in Wexford would know the family as the Devereauxes because that is the way we pronounce the name in Wexford - I have been dealing with this since April. There is the correspondence to the HSE in respect of these matters. On 1 June, I was told by the HSE that the responsible person to come back to me was on leave, would not be returning until 21 June and that I would not get a response until then. This is a couple in their late 80s who have not been separated in 63 years except by decision of this State, a decision that no one with any sense of compassion would accept.

For months, their son, Tom, and daughter, Christine, have been fighting the system to enable their mother to be admitted to the same nursing home as their father. They detailed their mother's considerable mobility and memory difficulties as well as all the other medical problems. They were all outlined in correspondence that both they and I have forwarded to the HSE, yet the answer was repeatedly "No" until such time as it was raised on the national airwaves. Bluntly, it is not good enough that the system is so defective that one can only have a compassionate response if it is raised on a programme such as Joe Duffy's, whose intervention I welcome.

What about all the others? What about the other Michaels and Kathleens who do not have the wherewithal to reach the national media? How many more cases are there that we do not know about, especially given the processes that were so well laid out and set out by the Taoiseach simply do not work? One after another, all these groups, bureaucrats and decision-makers deal with the detailed medical reports but cannot come to what is now a self-evident, compassionate decision until someone points it out in the national media.

How did this come to pass? How many more Michaels and Kathleens are there to be dealt with?

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