Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I generally support what I heard in regard to last night's "Prime Time Investigates" programme. On many occasions, I have spoken about the need for us to consider care of the elderly in a broader and more holistic fashion. The difficulties in the current private care arrangements were highlighted last night and we discussed the issue of nursing home subventions etc. previously.

My concern is that we are failing to consider the elderly in a broader fashion. We almost see them as a commodity that must be cared for and we do not consider the more obvious solutions such as family support, carer's allowance etc.

Notwithstanding the fact we are close to the end of this Oireachtas, we must put services for, and care of, the elderly back on the political agenda and debate the services which are or more pertinently are not available to the elderly. The one size fits all solution is not working. As I said previously, the view that nursing home subvention will provide a nice clean bed in a nice nursing home as a panacea for every senior citizen is a shocking dereliction of duty. We must be much more holistic, community and family orientated in the services we provide.

We will shortly debate the Social Welfare Bill 2010 in which carers are losers, and I will address that later. Care of the elderly does not begin and end with a nursing home bed, whether privately or HSE provided. We must look at the broader picture and I ask that we set aside time for an urgent debate.

I said previously when we debated the possibility of a referendum on the rights of children that I hoped the next Oireachtas would consider the concept of a referendum to give some degree of constitutional protection to the elderly because they are not sufficiently protected across a wide range of services. We must aim to redress that difficulty.