Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Any discussion or statements on excess mortality must take account of our very recent past and the difficulties and terrible deaths associated with Covid. We commend the Government, the health services and the schemes aimed at ensuring everything is done to help and assist those who remain at risk. I think of the ongoing vaccination schemes and so forth. However, in the main, we are living longer and we can be thankful that we are a lot healthier. In recent decades, we have been making progress on heart disease and cancer care. It is incumbent on us to pay tribute to all those who work with our elderly, both in care settings and in the community, and to families who care for their loved ones and ensure their lives are fulfilling and lengthy.

Mental health is an issue for all ages but, in this instance, I want to acknowledge the difficulties associated with the mental health of the elderly. Again, we should not be shy about committing to assisting, congratulating and working with all those who help in these spheres, including volunteers, men's sheds now active across many communities, women's sheds being initiated in many places, active retirement groups and family and community resource centres and cultural organisations, all of which are embracing the task of ensuring that retirement and old age become an opportunity for many to enrich their lives. The Government should continue along its path of assisting and helping those groups to ensure that is the case.

The healthiest surroundings for anybody who is aged and who needs care is in their own home and their own community. The fair deal scheme helps and assists in providing necessary funding for those who require nursing home care. Many homes built 30 years or more ago are not compatible with the needs of the aged or those who need care. Local authority schemes that assist in providing funding to adapt homes are fine but there is never enough and there are many on waiting lists in my own county and, I am sure, in others.

If it were such that the fair deal scheme could be extended to allow for house adaptation and the new low-carbon economy retrofit, and if the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, could be involved in that scheme, I might use this opportunity for nothing else only to impress upon the Government the use, assistance and value that could be associated with that initiative, as compared to the costs associated with nursing home care. Those people we speak of would then have an opportunity to remain in their homes and communities, and to have their families who are committed to them, in such a better, more graceful and altogether more appropriate surroundings. Then I am sure that the mortality rates that others are talking about - with which I do not necessarily agree or attest to - would be declining. We could increase again the huge progress we have made on that in recent times.

When I noticed this debate taking place, I sought the opportunity to impress upon the Government the prospect of extending the fair deal scheme to cater for house adaptation and for making those homes available where there is a willingness on the part of the occupants, their families and communities to ensure they play a participative role in the community throughout their lives, rather than in the first three quarters of their lives.

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