Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to deal with several issues. I welcome the people in the Visitors Gallery and our friends in the Press Gallery. On the so-called in loco parentisclause, I raised this issue with the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, last November and I have also submitted several parliamentary questions on the matter but the HSE has refused to change its position. I ask the Minister to review this clause immediately as it is an excessively restrictive provision in the HSE home care day hours support system. It is described by the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation as a provision that makes virtual prisoners of parents in their own homes. I am pleading with the Minister to review it.

At the launch of the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation service evaluation report by Coventry University and Trinity College at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland last November, we heard that the HSE inloco parentisrule is having a disproportionate and damaging impact on the families of the sickest children in this state. Under this rule, parents must remain in the house at all times, even when there is an agency nurse there providing care. This makes it impossible for family members to take the space necessary to get on with other vital aspects of their family life, including caring for other children and so on. This clause must not only be reviewed by the HSE, the HSE must strive to adopt the significantly more adaptable and family friendly model of care offered by the Jack and Jill foundation.

In County Tipperary, 51 families of seriously ill children have been helped by the foundation to date. I was delighted last year to hear from the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation that it is extending from four to five the age up to which it attends to sick children. This is possible, not owing to Government funding or to the HSE, but to funding provided by companies in the voluntary and private sectors which were lobbied by the foundation. There are many cases that are only now coming to light as a result of the review. It is only now that families are realising the impact of the inloco parentisclause whereby parents or another suitably qualified adult must remain in the home at all times when care is being provided. This makes a nonsense of home care. The people providing the care are experts. This is a mean, lean and horrible imposition by the HSE. It is heartless in the extreme and I ask the Minister to take another look at it.

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