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

I welcome the debate and commend Deputy Butler on her consistency in dealing with the issue of dementia. I have vast experience of dealing with the issue. Working with elderly people with dementia for three years as a care assistant in Cherry Orchard Hospital gave me probably the best life experience I have had in my life. I refer not only to the elderly people there but also the staff and relatives who had to deal with this issue. It is testimony to the staff who work in health services. They show such dedication in these extremely difficult circumstances. The debate we are having is welcome.

Elderly people have suffered immensely because of austerity cuts and increasing poverty levels in the last decade. A report in theIrish Examiner in March this year estimated that 65,000 older people were at risk of poverty and that 85,000 people experienced deprivation. Another report in October stated about 6,000 elderly people were on waiting lists to receive home care support. This issue urgently needs to be dealt with.

To deal with the present we must deal with the past. In 2008, in response to Fianna Fail's attempt be bring forward changes to the medical card scheme for the over-70s, more than 15,000 older people mobilised to force an embarrassing climbdown by the then Fianna Fáil Government. In another blow to elderly people Fianna Fáil intended to reduce the State pension in 2011, but huge pressure from elderly groups made it back down. However, it managed to make significant cuts to carer's benefit, carer's allowance, disability allowance, widow's, widower's and surviving civil partner's contributory pension and death benefit, all of which hugely affected the elderly. These are not abstract actions but decisions that greatly affected older people's lives and well-being.

Let us not forget the former Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, who in coalition with Fianna Fáil introduced the fair deal nursing home support scheme in 2009. Instead of providing public care for the elderly, the scheme introduced a co-payments system under which the cost of care was shared between the State and patients, making people pay for services to which previously they had been entitled under the guise of so-called "fairness". By 2011 the funding allocation for the scheme had run out, leaving elderly people waiting in hospitals instead of nursing homes. It was an abject failure caused by the very bad decision to privatise elderly care services. I also note that the Minister of State, Deputy English, made a statement in theIrish Examiner yesterday that public lands could be used to support private ventures such as retirement homes. It was a bizarre statement. Both the Minister of State, Deputy English, and Deputy Daly were quoted in The Irish Times warning that a housing crisis was looming for older people. Of course, they are right; the ongoing housing crisis affects everybody.

I am curious as to how the obsession with privatisation and the market is going to solve the housing crisis or provide care for the elderly. We can see the damage this agenda has caused and is causing and what it will do in the future. I hope this is only the beginning of improvements to care services for the elderly, as weak mitigations will not be enough to provide care on an equal basis for all.

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