Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Everybody in this House recognises the importance of the fair deal scheme and that it has served our society so well in the past. The €30 million deficit in the scheme this year is having a detrimental effect. The consequences are that beds in hospital for people who are ill are being taken by healthy patients. I refer to elderly individuals who are in hospitals and have nobody to take them home. They are kept in hospital because of a lack of funding in order to ensure that the fair deal scheme can be operated and to take that pressure off it. There is an impact on the nursing homes as well with beds vacant and no funding there to take people who would be qualified applicants. At the moment there are 6,000 people on the waiting list for home help. There is a lack of resources for home help packages. The number of people over 65 years of age is increasing by 20,000 each year. More and more people will be looking for nursing home packages and the resources have to be put in place to meet that demand as a priority.

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