Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support this motion and I thank Sinn Féin for the detail in it, particularly the recognition that "the best value for money is provided by directly employed and not-for-profit homecare workers".

In that context, particularly on a night when we have just had a two-hour discussion on the summer economic statement, I find the speech read out by the Minister of State disingenuous and worrying. I find it disingenuous because he spoke about hundreds of thousands or millions of hours without putting them in any context whatsoever. I also find I am in agreement with Deputy Kelly on a statement on the second page of the speech which jumped out at me. It read: "The Service is not demand led and is therefore operated in line with agreed budgetary limits and targets, as set out in the HSE National Service Plan". On another page is a sort of collateral damage to that type of budgeting; some 6,310 people have been assessed as needing home help but they are not going to get it. The Minister of State assured us that the Health Service Executive has said that this list will be reviewed "as funding becomes available". That is the nub of it.

As Sinn Féin's motion outlines, directly employed care is much more cost-effective. If the Minister of State can show me that what is set out in that motion is not correct, I will certainly apologise to him. If it is correct, or even if we are out by a few euro, how can a Minister of State come in here tonight, following the summer economic statement, and not set out a vision that will save this country money? Is it not incumbent on him to tell us how he will save money by having a proper statutory scheme that will look after our people by providing home care as a right, with no co-payment?

In 2018 the national risk assessment referred to the fact that our population is getting elderly, which is a positive, as a risk. It noted the need to plan for the implications of that. Organisations on the ground like Age Action and others are also worried. In 2016 more than 637,000 people were over the age of 65. That number will increase to a million by 2031.

I do not cite those figures to frighten; I use them positively and in the way the Government should on foot of its risk assessment to plan properly for home help.

My time is limited so I will finish by putting a human face on those figures. The Government has a duty to save money which it can do by providing a service that is cost-effective through directly-employed people and which is, of course, demand-led. I refer to three people in Galway without identifying even their sex. The first is a person in his or her early 60s and who has dementia. That person has been given a maximum provision of 11.5 hours. After many representations, it appears there will be a review. A person with a serious and progressive disease has been given a maximum provision of ten hours. Another person is aged 96 and has been given ten hours. That is Galway city. I disagree with one aspect of the Fianna Fáil amendment, namely, the roll-out of the single-assessment tool. That was rolled out as a pilot project and it has not been assessed. In my view, it is an integral part of the problem. I ask the Minister of State and Fianna Fáil to withdraw their respective amendments to let us go forward together in a positive way to save the State money while valuing our elderly people.

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