Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Regional Group for tabling the motion. We are here week after week discussing the very same issue and we need to see more progress in this area. This is why the Government must advance the vital regulation for the home care sector and make the legislation a priority. It has to be a priority. We know what is happening in the constituencies. It must establish the promised commission on care to modernise social care arrangements. Too many people are unable to access the funded home care packages they desperately require. The waiting lists for home care at the end of March reached an alarming 6,432 individuals.

Will the Minister of State look at home care? People tell me how restrictive it is. I completely understand risk assessments but home help workers are restricted in what they can do. I know of a recent case where a woman asked for a piece of toast, but was told the home help could not make the toast because she might choke on it. I can understand this in certain cases but we need to be careful not to get to a situation where the risks narrow down what home help workers are able to do to very little. Perhaps we need to review the risk assessments on an ongoing basis with regard to what can be done to ensure people are comfortable in their own homes. Otherwise it defeats the purpose.

One of the biggest problems we have in Mayo is with regard to people who are kept in hospital longer than they need to be. We have great pressures on Mayo University Hospital and other hospitals. We do not have home care support packages in place. Has there been a proper audit on the cost of not having home care at the right time? I am not sure whether a financial figure has been put on it but that should be done. Sometimes all that is listened to is information on the money lost. We have wasted so much money and put people's lives at risk. Hospitals are backed up. People desperately need an acute bed but cannot get one because the home help is not there. Mayo University Hospital is overcrowded because of delayed discharges. Every month patients who do not have to be there are in acute beds. This means hundreds of bed days are lost each month.

Other people live at home in real hardship. We are dealing with an elderly lady in Mayo who has a disability. She had an agency doing her visits but she was being put to bed at 5.30 p.m. Being put to bed at 5.30 p.m. on a nice summer day is not acceptable. It was done because staff were not available to call on her in the evenings. None of us would like to be told we have to go to bed at 5.30 p.m. and wait there until the next morning in this heat. It is not the quality of living we should be giving to older people in their own homes.

I want to speak about respite, not only for elderly people but also for families who are in desperate situations. Family carers do wonderful a job in the home but they need a break. Siblings also need a break where there are children with disabilities. There was a story in the Mayo Newslast week about a severely autistic eight-year-old boy in Westport. His parents are at the end of their tether. They have had no break whatsoever. They love their children and care deeply for them. They do everything for their children at home but they cannot get respite. Will the Minister of State ensure that all respite services for the families of people with disabilities and young people with disabilities are reopened so they can get the respite they desperately need to be able to have some quality of life themselves?

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