Camillus Glynn (Fianna Fail)

More power to the person's elbow regardless of whether it is Powers.

The Bill gives effect to the concept that people should be cared for in their own homes. This should be applied where possible. Statistics show that people are living longer and a greater percentage of the population is aged. This must be addressed by means of the recruitment of more consultant physicians with an interest in old age. I am pleased to note that my own hospital, St. Loman's, has a very good department dealing with the psychiatry of later life. I exhort An Bord Altranais to ensure more nurses are trained in geriatric nursing care. I applaud the role of religious orders in the care of the elderly. While it is argued that the religious orders have outlived their role in the care of the elderly and in other care situations, I do not agree. In my view, they were never more needed.

Last year the Government allocated €150 million for service improvement in this area and next year an additional €255 million will be allocated to augment the enhanced spend. The measures include 2,000 more home care packages providing a total of more than 5,000 packages. Further increases in home help hours have been outlined by the Minister of State and there will be an increase in the number of day and respite places. Home helps provide a very important service. I have a family relative who is fast coming to the stage when they will require ongoing care. The home help service is providing an excellent service which ensures this person can live in the dignity of their own home and look after themselves to the degree their illness allows.

The Bill provides that the agency can arrange for a review to be carried out of the degree of dependency or means of a person in receipt of a subvention. Where the HSE is satisfied that the person no longer qualifies for subvention or qualifies for a different rate of subvention, it can arrange for the payment to stop or be altered appropriately and for a notice of same to be sent to the applicant and the nursing home proprietor, if appropriate. Where a person's subvention payment is being increased or decreased, the HSE will not implement this decision for 60 days to give the person time to put their affairs in order. This is a de facto acceptance that geriatric medicine works and that people who must be placed in care situations can often recover sufficiently to be discharged. A person while in care may require additional care such as total nursing care instead of partial nursing care. This would require a higher level of subvention.

The appeals mechanism is provided for in the new section 7E inserted by the Bill. The new section 7F is of particular importance with reference to what happened in a certain nursing home and where people died. It provides that a nursing home must inform the HSE in writing of the death, discharge or permanent departure of a resident within 48 hours. This is to ensure that subventions do not continue to be paid in respect of persons who are no longer in a home as this is what happened in some cases. Additional residential places should be required for the reasons I have stated in my contribution because people are living longer.

I ask the Minister of State and my colleague on the Independent benches, Deputy Henry, how much use is made of the new drug for the treatment of Alzheimer's. There is controversy in Britain where it was proposed that addicts in prison would be given heroin whereas those with Alzheimer's cannot receive treatment. To what degree is the new treatment for Alzheimer's being used?

Since my time in the nursing service I have been aware of the lack of visits made to those in long-term care. I ask the Minister of State to consider making a provision in this legislation that it would be mandatory, within reason, for people in both short-term and long-term care to receive visits. I have many times seen where weeks, months and years come and go and there is not a sign of a relative. This may not be to the liking of some people but the truth hurts.

It is the case that some older people will require nursing home care. To help with this, the Government provided additional funding of €20 million for the nursing home subvention scheme in 2006. The new funding brought the budget for the nursing home subvention scheme to €160 million. This is a far cry from the €5 million that obtained in 1993 when the scheme was first introduced. The additional €20 million is to support more basic nursing home subventions and reduce waiting lists for enhanced subventions. It is also designed to bring more consistency to subvention support throughout the country.

To ensure the existing subvention scheme for private nursing home care is grounded in law and to implement the improved scheme on a standardised basis, the Government has introduced the Health (Nursing Homes) (Amendment) Bill 2006. I look forward to considering the proposals which the Minister of State will bring forward by way of amendments on Committee Stage. It is an important Bill which is badly needed. We all know what happened in the past. There has been criticism from certain quarters in the House about the charging of medical card patients in hospital but as I have already said, it was the worst kept secret in the history of the State and it obtained under successive Governments. However, it is never too late to do the right thing and this Bill is a further step in the right direction.