Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. He mentioned 2019 to 2020. I understand that the additional hours in the budget are for 2020. If he is true to his reply, no extra home help hours are becoming available. We are into the last five weeks of this year and there is a crisis as people wait for home help hours. Families are waiting for home help packages and are making decisions about loved ones coming home. As I have told the Minister for Health on a number of occasions in recent weeks, a constituent of mine is in Dún Laoghaire, awaiting discharge. The HSE has met all the relevant bodies over the past few days but the family is still waiting for sanction of home help hours. The difficulty, which has been clearly described to me in writing, is that it is a question of funding. If we are to be serious about it and about getting the best possible bang for our buck in the health budget, if we can take people out of long-stay, very specialised beds and into a home setting, it would be by far the best way to utilise resources. I cannot see why we cannot look at individual cases as a priority, even at this late stage in 2019.

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