Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Táim buíoch de Teachta O'Reilly fá choinne an rún tábhachtach seo. The home support service is the lifeline on which many families depend. We all know this because we know of elderly relatives and citizens with disabilities. Without it, many of our loved ones are forced into hospitals to occupy desperately needed acute hospital beds or expensive nursing home accommodation, away from the familiarity of their own homes. We all know most people want to be cared for in their homes. That is what I would like and I am sure if the Minister of State were sick, it is what he would like also.

Those providing the home support service are to be commended on their efforts. Many carers would have even greater levels of stress without them and they are an important and sometimes the only regular social contact with the world. Unfortunately, many people rarely have enough time allocated to properly support family members, friends and neighbours who need that help at home. Mar a dúirt Teachtaí Doherty agus O'Reilly, home support is one of the best value services in the health service. The home support service costs approximately €165 per week, which is in sharp contrast to the weekly cost of a hospital bed of almost €6,000 or the cost of a nursing home bed at just over €1,000 per week.

There are 6,000 older people on waiting lists. There is a freeze on new home help applications, although I know the Minister of State will deny this and I have heard him doing it here before. I raised the matter in a parliamentary question to the Minister and was informed that I was wrong in believing no new clients would be allocated home supports until November. The Minister stated, "the recycling of hours will continue in line with budgetary management", but he knows that is not good enough. It is not a policy that will support our cherished and vulnerable citizens. It is Fine Gael ideology writ large in Alice in Wonderland prose. It is a policy that prevents the home support service from expanding in response to need, and no amount of opaque language can disguise that. A constituent in Louth whose mother suffers from dementia is one of the lucky ones in receipt of an intensive home care package. She told us that at a recent meeting in Drogheda, people were told only eight citizens in Louth have this intensive care package, and another eight people are trying to get access to the package.

None of this is news to the Government but it has ignored it all. A Government committed to equality and minding the most vulnerable of its citizens would ensure the next budget would adequately fund home support services, developing a fully funded new statutory scheme and a system of regulation for home support services. Unfortunately, Fine Gael does not offer that type of government and Deputy Harris is not that type of Minister.

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