Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am here behind the Minister but I have his back, so it is okay. He need not worry. I very much welcome the plan. It is unprecedented in scale and funding of €600 million. We have never seen the likes of it previously for a winter plan. Clearly, the Minister's fingerprints are all over it with, I believe, close to five million hours of home care. That is huge and it is significant. It is something previous Governments and previous Members, including Opposition leaders, have been calling for consistently, and that is something we will deliver on. I congratulate the Minister on that because it will make a huge difference to families, to communities and, most importantly, to the elderly people who this was intended to help. I congratulate him on that and fair play to him. He came into this role with a lot of passion and fair play to him for fighting for that allocation. It is incredibly important.

Of course, the winter plan was never going to be all-encompassing. There were elements that all of us, Government Members as well, would like to have seen included. Perhaps, therefore, the following could be seen as much as a budget plea as a plea to have it included in the winter plan and that it could be included in aspects of the health budget.

The first topic I wish to touch on is disability services. I appreciate from the announcement that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, fought tooth and nail for funding towards disability services. She managed to secure €10 million in conjunction with the Minister, Deputy Donnelly. Unfortunately, in terms of the overall scale and the overall picture for disability services, it is only the tip of the iceberg and only scratches the surface. The truth of the matter is that because of chronic underfunding in previous years, the reality is that disability services need a budget of in or around €100 million to bring them up to an absolute acceptable standard. That is just the reality. While I appreciate that €10 million will go some way towards that, we certainly need more allocated towards disability services.

I am aware that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, was briefed by the National Federation of Voluntary Service Providers during the week. I believe the picture and the story the representatives painted for her was pretty bleak and told a story of where we are at. There are approximately 26,000 users within the National Federation of Voluntary Service Providers. Of that figure, for 400 of the families the main carer is in his or her 80s. I believe it was alluded to earlier in the House. That has massive implications. Obviously, because the carer is elderly, it completely limits the amount of services the actual service user, which is a child in this situation, can avail of. That is worrying. Obviously, the person cannot go out into the community because of the fear of the elderly carer contracting coronavirus, which we know is devastating for people in their 80s and upwards.

A further non-Covid related issue is the fact that many of these children and servicer users are well into their 40s, 50s and 60s. There is a fear and anxiety that goes with the fact that their parents and main carers are becoming elderly and there is no service coming in to replace that. That is a pretty stark reality. There are some users with primary carers in their 90s, so it is pretty stark. That goes further, because another group is coming up behind where the main carers are in their 60s. Unless we put the residential care facilities and day care facilities in place, there will be serious concern and anxiety and those vulnerable groups will be left exposed.

Services obviously have had to be greatly reduced during Covid-19. They are only running at approximately 40% capacity from what I can gather. I know first-hand of a fantastic voluntary service provider in west Cork called CoAction West Cork, and I have spoken to the Minister about this previously. It is fantastic and I have seen first-hand the difference it makes for its service users. The interaction between the staff and the service users is phenomenal. Obviously, over the past six or seven months there has been an absolute void and it has been running at a very reduced capacity. That will have an impact going forward. With that said, to make the disability service sector work properly, it needs significantly more funding, and budget 2021 is an opportunity to do that.

Another aspect of health that could have been more strongly represented in the winter plan, but again this can be taken as a budgetary plea, is the whole area of mental health, which has been touched on a lot here. Historically, it has been chronically underfunded but now, for the first time, perhaps, in the past five or six years we have started to open up and talk about mental health and our own mental health experiences within the family and the community. That is important. However, that conversation exposes the fact that the whole service has been chronically underfunded. As a Government, we now need to step in and address that because so many families and people nationwide are impacted by this. That has been stressed all day in the Chamber during this debate.

I must make a plea for Bantry General Hospital in my constituency of west Cork. I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, on several occasions about this and he is well aware of it. I wish, however, to make this plea in the Dáil. There is a 24-hour acute emergency access service in Bantry hospital at the moment. It is vitally important when one thinks about the geographical nature of west Cork and how big it is. The journey from somewhere like Castletownbere to Cork University Hospital takes hours, so Bantry provides a really important service. There is 24-hour acute emergency access there at the moment. That is underpinned by the provision of an anaesthetist but we need support anaesthesiology there to ensure the service remains. The Minister, Deputy Donnelly, is aware of it but I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight it in the Dáil Chamber.

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