Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise a very practical case with the Minister of State. I spoke to my colleague, Senator Wall, this morning and he informed me he is aware of at least four home care workers in the south Kildare area who are coming up to retirement age. The families who are being cared for contacted him to say there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of hours they are receiving. In this retention and recruitment crisis, the question arises of why, if those carers wanted to continue in employment under the HSE, they could not continue to give the care to those families they are providing at present. There is a very arbitrary retirement age and that needs to be examined by the Minister of State because it is having such an impact for those families. These workers are women who have been providing care for a long time and doing an excellent job, according to Senator Wall. Why can they not continue to do so? That is something that needs to be looked at. I fully appreciate that the Minister of State has been able to secure €700 million-plus for the Department for this budget line, but – and I share this view with my colleagues – why do we find ourselves as a country having to go out to the world to recruit 1,000 people to provide care in this day and age? The reason is the rates of pay are not competitive enough for people locally to want to be employed in the service. If the Government makes the terms and conditions competitive and ensures the wage rates are strong, it will entice more and more people locally into the service. That is something that must be addressed and an ERO is the way to do this. As Deputy Nash said, if that can be done for the childcare sector it can be done for this sector as well.

I am fearful that we are on an inexorable journey towards 100% privatisation of home care services and that while we in this House can lobby and advocate for families at present, there will come a time that will no longer be the case. The person at the other end of the line in the HSE will no longer be doing that job because that job will be made redundant and the ability of individual Deputies and public representatives to make cases for families for additional home care packages or hours will be rendered redundant because it will be privatised. That is the fear. The State always and ever played a vital role and was able to police and regulate the service and provide the resources to the families at the most local level. My fear is we are reaching a point where if the service becomes wholly privatised, the ability of individual Deputies to lobby on behalf of families will be rendered redundant and we need to be very careful about that. We need to ensure there is State provision to act as a counterbalance to privatisation of services because if I have pick up the phone to a private entity to lobby on behalf of a family, the private entity will not care one jot who I am or what I represent or the mandate I have, so I urge caution in that regard. We want State provision, a State-regulated service so at least Deputies across this House, whoever they may be, can at least advocate on behalf of their constituents. I move to the terms of reference of the commission on care and note the words of the Minister of State in respect of setting that up. We need a statutory home care scheme. If we do not have such a scheme, the accountability mechanism will reduce dramatically. We also need a national care strategy on this. I am hearing a legal entitlement to assessment is one of the provisions that will be looked at by the commission on care, but we also need a legal entitlement to provision.

See this speech in context