John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the Housing (Adaptation Grant for People with a Disability) Bill. I thank my colleagues for introducing it. We all acknowledge and recognise the significant and important role that the adaptation grant has played. We have all seen it in our own communities. When I was preparing a note for this, I quickly realised that there are two cohorts of people who avail of the grant. The first is somebody who is living at home whose condition is deteriorating over time, whose family has the opportunity to make necessary arrangements. The people we see in our constituency offices are those who have experienced a crisis or a traumatic event. For example, where an elderly person has had a fall, a stroke or something similar. They are in the hospital and the family comes to us because they want to know what to do, what is available and how to get the person home. This is an element which is slowing the process.

As the Minister of State knows, there are people in hospital today who could be in their own homes if there were appropriate and adequate facilities available to them. That is where they want to be and it is where their families want them to be. This legislation will assist in facilitating that. It is important to recognise that this is only one aspect. Previous speakers made the point that legislation only goes so far. It is important that this legislation is enacted but it should be underpinned by the provision of home care supports for older people. The cost of a person in the greater Dublin area spending a week in a nursing home is approximately €1,500 per week. The economic and financial benefits to the State of being able to keep somebody in his or her home, where he or she wants to be, needs to be recognised. We need to take legislative and administrative steps to make that happen. In many cases, people apply for the grant and try to get quotations at the same time. It is an extremely protracted process and they are asked for additional information. A previous speaker made the point that, during the existing application process, there is no discrimination between somebody whose case might be deemed urgent and who is currently in a hospital and ready for discharge and a person whose case does not have that level of urgency. This creates substantial anxiety and pressure for the families involved.

One or two speakers had issues with parts of this legislation. Those issues can be dealt with on Committee Stage. I encourage Members on all sides to allow the Bill to progress. I encourage the Government not to delay the Bill and to accept it in a positive way in the context of the other steps that could be taken. I refer here to home care packages that would run in parallel with what is proposed here in order to ensure that we are creating the maximum amount of available spaces in our acute hospitals and not having people unnecessarily delayed in those hospitals, particularly as they do not want to be there.

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