Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted we are debating this subject. In my constituency, as is probably also the case for the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, a lot of people come to me who say they or their parents have been assessed for hours, there is an allocation given but the hours are not provided. Nothing happens. I dealt with a man who needs two people to help him because he has had three strokes. He will not get that help because there is somebody else living in the house with him, namely, his wife, who is 82 years of age. That is not right. There are things going on that are just not right. I have plenty of cases of people who have tried to get care privately and do something to keep their family member at home. It flies in the face of the Sláintecare strategy if that cannot be done.

Regarding the private companies providing care services, the reality is there is a tiered system. Some of these elite companies, let us call them, are getting the high rates that were mentioned by a previous speaker. However, small companies that employ people locally are getting the pickings off the bottom of the pot. Their staff get the longest distances to go to care for people. These companies are being told that if they want to get up with the elite, they must have policies in place and everything done to prove for the next tender that they are as good as the big guys, who are deemed to be good just because they have many more people working for them. The reality is reflected in the case of a company I know of, which has done the training and brought all its staff along with it only for the HSE to poach its staff, after all the training is done, and give them a higher rate of pay than the company can give. I am referring to tiers 3 and 4 companies.

It is a crazy system. There cannot be differentiation between one company providing a service and another company when both are giving staff the same training. It is down to the corporate image of the bigger companies. They know exactly how to do things. As the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, knows, 180 beds have been lost from nursing home services in counties Galway and Roscommon for this winter. More will be lost if we do not do something to support private nursing homes in their hour of need.

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