Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail)

I am not sure it is fair to her or them to expect her to comprehensively cover all these areas, despite her valiant efforts to do it well.

I am glad to have the opportunity to make a few points. I commend the work of Senator Zappone, Senator O'Keeffe and the various other people. I commend also Senator Mary White on the substantial document she produced in the context of care for the elderly. As a colleague has said, the stones on the road know what needs to be done. We welcome the representative from the Senior Citizens' Parliament, Mr. Sean Dillon from the Older and Bolder campaign, and others who have taken the time to listen online and elsewhere. There is no mystery in respect of what needs to be done. That is clear. We need to publish the path. Nobody is stupid in the sense that we all know there are constraints on the public purse. While a strategy may be published, it will not be possible to achieve everything in the first week, month or five years. That is fine. Let us publish it. In the previous Government I was critical of the fact that while it had the aspiration for a carers' strategy, it chose not to publish it because it had no budget for its implementation. Why have a plan we could not follow? I take the other extreme. That is like telling a business that whatever it does, it should not have a strategic plan because it will never achieve it. Nothing is surer than if the plan is not published, it will never be achieved because there is nothing to target.

I ask that the report be published as quickly as possible. The consultation phase ended in November 2010. Since then various civil servants are passing it from one drawer to another for fear it might get published because it would increase their workload in terms of what they are expected to do, to get more for less, to reorganise things, and to connect boxes that are not connected in a way that can help the elderly. Let us try to move it forward quickly. The net cost for implementation of our proposal is €60 million, which is a large sum in the circumstances. I ask the Minister of State to explain to the people what the Government proposes to do to improve the lot of the elderly.

In the report, we recommend not cutting the pension, changing housing aid for older people to include personal alarm systems, and issuing a medical card to everybody who has had a diagnosis for end of life. To pay for that we suggest putting to working people that if they pay an extra amount, this is what we will be able to do. When it comes to care of the elderly or the good education of the youth, most of us would be happy to contribute a little more if it was put to us.

In preparation for today I put on Facebook that the debate was about to take place. I have received a couple of comments from older people which I promised to raise. The fastest growing use of Facebook is by the over 55 age group. One suggestion was that people visit the elderly. What is being done with all the unemployed people? Could it be put to them that they voluntarily visit the elderly? There is a huge amount of fear in regard to the travel pass and the pension. I disagree with the new proposals in terms of the contributory pension and they should be revisited. If it was up to the Minister of State, notwithstanding the fact she has to work with her colleagues, it would not happen. I ask her to look at that.

The Minister of State concluded by saying the strategy, when published, would be a consultation piece. Please do not let it be that. Let it be a roadmap we can follow and let us all work together to secure the resources to ensure we can do it.