Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, I put a question to the Taoiseach during Questions on Promised Legislation in regard to the plan in place to deal with the chronic shortage of carers available to deliver the home care support service. The scheme was brought in by the Government to ensure that people could stay in their homes with a level of support. Without such supports, they would be likely to end up in a residential or nursing home facility. The budget granted a massive increase in the home care support hours available. I am critical in that regard because there is no delivery.

Without delivery, that increase is, in effect, spin and it creates false hope. Nothing is more demoralising for people, our older age cohort and our most vulnerable people, than to receive letters giving them the good news that they have been granted a home care support package, only to go to the next line which states that it is not possible to deliver it because there is such a critical shortage of carers.

In general, the people receiving these letters have paid tax all their lives and their children and working and paying tax to contribute to the Exchequer so we can provide these schemes. Yet, a review of the critical skills requirements by the Department of Social Protection states that no critical skills permit allocation is required within the sector as recruitment difficulties and challenges faced by the sector are primarily due to contract issues and the terms and conditions being offered. That is serious. It is not an issue of money in that we have the finances to deliver the hours. We must consider the money being made available to carers. Carers, particularly in rural Ireland, are using their own vehicles to drive from house to house on an hourly rate of €12.70. It is not making sense. If there is an issue in the HSE in regard to terms and conditions and if it transfers the provision of services to the private sector, then we must examine that aspect.

To put this in context, 5,000 people are waiting on home care hours. Some 1,000 of those people, a disproportionate number, are in County Wexford. One fifth of the overall number of people waiting are County Wexford. I am dealing with a lady who is in her mid-70s and who is looking after her husband, who had an accident recently and is now a paraplegic.

He is in his mid-70s. She gets care five days a week but gets no care at the weekends when she is on her own lifting her paraplegic husband. I am aware of a lady who has been in a nursing home for the last 18 months. She went there on the basis that it was a step-down facility and that she was going to receive home care support. She cannot go home without it.

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