Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Michael Harty and his colleagues in the Rural Independent Group on putting forward this motion, which is extremely important. I know that our own party spokesperson on older people, Deputy Mary Butler, has been doing a lot of work in this area with different advocacy groups and highlighting to the Minister of State and to the Government the need to put additional resources into it.

All of us who are public representatives are very conscious of the importance of home support, home help and home care packages. In my own constituency work the one major concern I have had for a considerable time is the delays in the actual provision of the home care package or the home support following its initial approval. Far too often the HSE at local level must make decisions in a budgetary context, whereby the patient has been approved for home help or home support but the funding is not in place to provide it as soon as the patient needs it. Over the next few weeks, right until February or March, I am sure we will hear of overcrowding in emergency departments and be given figures concerning people who have been medically discharged but are still in acute hospital beds. In many instances, and we receive calls from the families of these people, the home care packages will not have been put in place, and we all know that caring for a person at home costs a fraction of keeping that person in an acute hospital bed.

The lack of provision has an additional adverse impact in that it causes delays for other people seeking to access acute hospital services.

The only way we will ever have a reasonable level of provision is if home support funding is provided on a demand-led basis. When a patient is medically approved as needing that support, it must be put in place. Health Service Executive officials at local level, public health nurses and administrators should not have to juggle plates to ensure the budget is not exceeded. If a person is deemed to require home help, he or she should not have to wait weeks to receive it, with the resultant cost elsewhere in the health service. We get very good value for money from the people who provide home care packages. As Deputy Butler said, they go way beyond the call of duty. People want to remain in their own homes and that is where the best care can be provided.

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