Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about this very important topic this evening. I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Tully for giving us the opportunity. I thank carers and home helps all around the country but especially in Kerry for the great work they do and continue to do. I must compliment one man who lives up the street and who came home from Limerick. Kilgarvan is a small place and he is only three doors up from me. His mother died a couple of weeks ago at 99 years of age. In 2014 he left his job in Limerick and left his wife and children there to stay with his mother. He took the responsibility of caring for his mother until the other day. I am thinking of my own uncle, Dan Rae, who looked after his mother - my grandmother - who lived to be 97 years of age. He took it on himself when he was quite a young man to look after her and do little else. There was no talk about money for carers at that time or anything like that. People do it out of love and they feel they have to look after the people who brought them into world and who looked after them when they were small and got them going. Unconditional love is what it is. Those people need to be looked after.

I thank Deputy Canney for bringing forward a motion a few weeks ago to get rid of the means testing for carers because it is often the case that if someone's spouse or partner is working, they are denied the carer’s allowance because of the means test even though they continue to look after their loved ones. So many things are happening with home helps. People are promised home helps but no one comes because we do not have the staff. That is not good enough.

Parents with children who were born with physical or mental disabilities look after their children. It is a massive burden and some, after a long wait, get the domiciliary care allowance but when the child reaches 16 years it is gone. We all know those people still need funding to keep going. It is a lonely life. Many of these people are living the disabled person’s life or the elderly person’s life. They have no life of their own.

That brings me to respite care. Take the massive territory from Poulgorm Bridge on the N69 all the way down through Kilgarvan, Kenmare, Sneem and Cahirdaniel and then the other side of the Kenmare River back to Lauragh, Ardgroom and the county bounds and up to Bonane. All that catchment area is depending on one respite bed in Kenmare hospital. People get one week but at the same time eight beds are idle in that new hospital. Those eight beds have been there since the hospital was built in 2011 or 2012. Those are the things the Minister should be addressing.

Home helps are going into houses for 20 minutes or half an hour and then they are supposed to go somewhere else. That is too short a time and it is too hard to get it. Many are not covered for weekends or bank holidays but people are still disabled or need help on those days.

Another issue that arises is that you need two home helps to operate a hoist and people have to be trained. It is often the case that only one can come in and that is not good enough. We should have surplus home helps available and at the ready to take up the slack. To leave a person for a day in bed, or even for 48 hours without getting out of bed at all, because there is no one to operate the hoist is not good enough.

In Denmark all their nursing homes and community care hospitals are practically empty because they have a proper home help system in their country.

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