Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I compliment Deputy Butler on tabling the motion and the seriousness of the discussion. The Minister of State knows as well as anybody else that since July the provision of home care packages and the allocation of additional home help supports for families throughout the country, especially in County Cork, have completely dried up. It is impossible to assist constituents who come to us for help to keep their loved ones at home and provide every support they can for families. Families look at ways by which they can work around their work schedules and other family commitments to try to ensure they will have supports in place. Nurses and other health professionals recognise the chronic need for additional support, but it is not available. What we are being told by the HSE is that no additional home help hours are available. In some cases, the numbers of hours have even been reduced.

A figure was trotted out again this morning for the number of extra home care packages being allocated in order to alleviate a potential trolley crisis in December and January. Given the number in chronic need of help, I would dearly love to see the 550 home care packages allocated. In some cases an elderly husband or wife is caring for his or her partner or loved one and he or she is looking for extra support. The situation is simply not acceptable. I put it to the Minister of State that we will come back here in the first or second week of January to see whether any of the extra home care packages has been allocated. I believe they will not have been. We must be serious about this issue because there is a chronic need for help across services.

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