Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this very worthy motion. The carer's allowance is an absolutely outrageous scandal when there is so much money in the State, as the Government continuously tells us. These people were not looked after in the budget. They put in the time and they care for people in their own homes and are proud to do so. They are saving the State tens of millions of euro but the Government did not recognise that or the efforts that they make.

Let us look at the legacy of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Greens in respect of elder care. People cannot get the carer's allowance, home help, a bed in a community hospital or a nursing home, or a bed in a medical ward if they are in need of urgent care. They cannot have urgent operations for things like cataracts and hip or knee replacements. At the very end, they are fleeced under the fair deal scheme. The Government has literally left people unaided at a very vulnerable time in their lives and that is because they cannot shout the loudest. They cannot stand outside the Dáil and cry that they have not got a bed. The only beds being offered to people in west Cork are in another county. It is an outrageous situation that people find themselves in. Some are on medical wards and they cannot leave because there is no bed in a community hospital or a nursing home. They are absolutely at breaking point. Community hospitals should be expanding because our ageing population is growing. Instead of an expansion in the number of beds, community hospitals are staying the same. They are quite brilliant in their delivery but they still have the same 25 or 30 beds that they had 30 years ago, when the aged population was not the size it is now. There is something wrong.

I will tell the Minister of State about home help. You cannot get home help in west Cork. I cannot understand it because I meet people who work in home help and who tell me they are willing to do extra hours. They are not given the time. We are told when we ring that no home help is available. Training for new home help workers now goes on for some eight, nine, ten or 12 months. Surely to God if a new home help is coming on, they can go door to door with a home help who is already working. That should be their training. That would be common sense training and real training on the ground. The Minister of State must look at these areas because the Government is letting down the elderly people of this country. They feel and know it, and will remind the Government on 29 November.

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