Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion. It is a matter that affects people in every city, town and village across the State and is not going anywhere. As our population ages, we need to invest more in home help services to ensure that supply is meeting increasing need but the Government has been failing miserably in this regard. It is very worrying to hear reports that home help hours could face cuts under the HSE's plan to plug a €500 million hole in the health budget. It is not just worrying; it does not make sense. As Deputy O'Reilly noted, this is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Without home help, we will not only have a further backlog in our hospitals as people's discharges are delayed but it also ends up costing the HSE and the State more. The cost of keeping a person in hospital is on average 36 times higher per week than the cost of discharging a person to their home where he or she can avail of home help supports. More than 6,000 people are on waiting lists for home help, almost a quarter of whom are in north Dublin. The reality is that our population is getting older and people are living longer. Instead of cutting these services, we should be looking to expand them.

I see the great work done by home help workers on the ground. They are invaluable in supporting people to live independently and in supporting families who are helping to care for their loved ones. We need to protect home help hours and expand this service. We also need to ensure that workers are protected and properly paid for the important work they do. Elderly people - vulnerable elderly people - deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. At the very least, they deserve to be given adequate home help hours to meet their needs.

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