John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and congratulate him on his recent elevation as I have not yet had the opportunity to do so. I wish him well in his post. I am from County Roscommon, which has the highest rate of dementia per capita in the country. At a recent conference on dementia, it was estimated that 4,000 people in the country will be diagnosed every year with the condition.

I have worked with an organisation called Western Alzheimers for a number of years and its biggest difficulty - a lack of funding - arises from the fact that it already deals with 381 families in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon. Home care packages are key to this. I bat for those three counties because that is the area where the association operates.

It is crucial there are no funding cuts to home care packages in those areas, in particular in my area, for which I have just given the figures, because we have the highest rateper capita.

I am a big supporter of Western Alzheimers and have raised funds for it. Part of its service delivery is to raise funds to deliver a service, but we are going through hard times and people do not have the money any more to contribute as much as they would like to. I have always complimented people who have always given to good causes, even in hard times. It is crucial that Government funding is put in place and that there are not cuts to home care packages.

I refer to the community employment schemes. They have no difficulty getting approval for CE employees but they have difficulty finding people to do the work. Many lone parents, who were allowed to keep their lone parents allowance and get a community employment allowance, were taking up those jobs and were very complimentary of them. That facility has been taken away and they must depend entirely on CE money. Community employment schemes are therefore finding it very difficult to get CE workers.

On the economics of not funding home care packages and respite services and putting people into high dependency beds in selected nursing homes, not every nursing home can deal with dementia patients. Given the small cost we are talking about, it makes economic sense to keep these people at home with the services the likes of Western Alzheimers provide.