Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to raise some issues. The thing that hurt me and many others the most, which I raised earlier with the Taoiseach, is that people died in nursing homes and hospitals without any family member being with them. I do not know who made that decision. We must go forward. The Government did several things right but there were a number of things that were not done right and this is one of them.

This is one thing I feel should not have happened. My own father died five years ago but I can remember every one of the last hours and minutes that I was with him. If I was denied being able to be with that man after all the years, or thought that nobody was with him, it would break my heart forever. I might as well be dead as well. I feel for all the families that went through this.

I ask the Minister to devise a way to let people in to see their family members who are in nursing homes. I have been asked about that several times, including this morning and yesterday. What benefit is there in stopping people from visiting their mother or father? I had another person contact me after lunch today on the same matter. I ask the Minister to review the situation. Discussions are going on to assess the benefit of that approach. I do not think it was of any benefit. Visiting could have been allowed in a controlled fashion for five, ten or 15 minutes. That would have kept many people happy.

I want to go forward. We must try to scramble out of the place we are in now to get back to where we were. We pay a lot of money to the WHO, which says that 1 m social distancing is sufficient. If the Government does not follow that recommendation, many places will not go back to where they were. Many hotels, restaurants and pubs will not open because it is not possible to manage a distance of 2 m in small places. Rural places are different. We are told that this pandemic is affecting and will affect rural places more than urban locations such as cities and bigger towns.

I heard the Taoiseach say home care packages could be the way to go. No one asked for an increase in home help hours more than I did in the previous Dáil. Day after day I asked for it because I know that people really want to spend as long as possible, or even the last days of their lives, in their own homes. I was glad to hear the Taoiseach say that might be the way to go or that he was considering doing that but the fact is that at the height of the pandemic he cut the home help to many people. I am sorry about that. Many of those who worked in the home help area did not get another job. Perhaps they were being kept back in case they were needed, but the fact is that it did not happen, and many people were left without their home help. I ask the Minister to restore the home help that was taken from people and to increase the home care packages so that people can remain longer in their homes and have the same people dealing with them. If that happened, they would not have to go into nursing homes or hospitals. I ask the Minister to ensure that happens.

Testing is not sufficient. A man got out of his bed at 4 a.m. last Sunday morning and finished up in a hospital. The doctor said he should be tested but some other official came along and said he could not be tested because he was not being admitted. That is not an adequate response.

Many people were in touch with me to help them get the Covid payment but yesterday and the day before two people contacted me who are trying to get off it. They must go online to do it but they have no broadband. They tried to make calls and were kept waiting at the end of the telephone line. They are like the two fellows who were stuck on the train who wanted to get off at Mallow. They finished up in Cork because the train was going direct to Cork. I am sorry, I have gone into my colleague, Deputy Mattie McGrath's, time.

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