Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I thank my colleagues for bringing forward this motion. I thank Deputy Grealish, Maria Burke, and Teresa Delaney in particular for drafting the motion. I thank the Minister of State for taking this motion on board wholeheartedly. We all know her commitment in relation to this. That is clearly reflected in the significant increase that we have seen in the home help and home care budget, which has gone up by 58% since 2019, up to €700 million this year. There is no doubt but that the money is there; the difficulty is that the hours that are being committed to are not being allocated. In fact, in 2023 there are just 59 additional hours a day being delivered across this country. That is 37 minutes of additional home help support per day in each primary care network for a population of 50,000. It is a case of the loaves and fishes. That is why we are in a situation where we have 6,500 individuals on waiting lists, trying to access support, including some people that are in hospital at the moment. The reality is that the number of people in the population aged over 65 is increasing and it will continue to increase over the years. In fact, the Central Statistics Office census statistics have shown us that today, there are more than 1 million people over the age of 60, and close to one in four of those are living on their own. We have a severe shortage of carers, leaving vulnerable individuals without the necessary support. This is support that the HSE has independently assessed as being required for these people to continue to live with dignity in their own homes. I refer to people with disabilities and older people. This is down to a chronic shortage of home help hours, which is causing delays in discharging patients from hospital, particularly vulnerable older individuals and that is exacerbating the chaos we have within those health facilities.

I accept that this is a complex challenge and that it is not easy to solve. However, in the interim, at least where we have allocated those hours and where the money is available, could we not provide it to the families to use it to buy in those services, where they themselves can support carers? This has been done in the past for children with profound disabilities. Why are we denying it now to older people with disabilities? Why are we denying it to families with older people? I will give the Minister of State one example. It is a case that I have spoken about to her previously regarding John and Mary. They are a vulnerable older couple living on their own. John's wife requires full-time care. While they have been allocated hours in the evenings and on weekends, they cannot get access to it whatsoever, and they are being denied those supports even though the money is there.

We could also take the case of Brigid, which the other Aire Stáit, Deputy Rabbitte, knows very well. She is a middle-aged woman confined to a wheelchair after spinal trauma. She has been told that she has to go into a public nursing home during the day, seven days a week, because home help is not available. Her husband will have to bring her in the morning and collect her from the public nursing home in the evening, which is going against stated Government policy. It is also going against the Ombudsman's report and the commitments that have been given by the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, not to put people with a disability into nursing homes, yet that is the solution that has been proposed to that family this week.

In addition, we need to give family carers a break. We have 86,000 individuals across this country providing at least 43 hours of caregiving every single week. These people are effectively trapped in their own homes. They need respite. They need a break. We are asking that the respite would be put on a legal footing, in order that every single full-time family carer in this country has a minimum number of days of respite available to them. That is vitally important.

I welcome the fact that this tender process is going on. I also welcome the reassurances the Minister of State has given us on what will be covered in that process. Could she provide assurances to us that in the tender process the whole issue of travel, in particular in rural areas, will be addressed? As we all know, the cost of living has gone up dramatically, as has the cost of transport, in recent years, yet these people are being denied the basic level of cost to cover their transport to and from the work they are carrying out. I want an assurance from the Minister of State that this matter will be addressed.

The Minister of State is correct in that quite a number of people have retired out of the system. Some of those people are prepared to go back and to do work, but they have been told by the HSE that their pension will be deducted if they do so under the pension abatement rules. Recently, Bernard Gloster reiterated that before the committee. The reality is that the pension abatement rules were brought in for super well-paid, high-level civil servants; they were not brought in to control the income of home helps. I want the Minister of State to take a leaf out of the book of the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley. As an exceptional measure, she got pension abatement introduced for teachers where there is a recruitment crisis in relation to teaching. Surely to God, if there is a recruitment crisis in relation to teaching, there is a recruitment crisis in relation to home help.

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