Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is welcome to the House. While listening to this debate it occurred to me that approximately one third of all debates in the House are directly related to health care. This emphasises the importance of the issue and I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this extremely important motion. It is an area on which we need to focus and bring about the necessary changes to assist families who must deal with a member of their family who has Alzheimer's disease or dementia.

It is extremely important for us to give every possible support.

The Minister of State's speech was very comprehensive in setting out a clear agenda for what he intends to do in this area over the next two to three years. Senator Cullinane and the Minister of State referred to wards of court. One area we have not worked on over the past number of years is enduring powers of attorney even though we did bring about the change in the law. We have not sold it as an area for people to sign up to. That means people can assign enduring power of attorney while they are fully competent and set out clear guidelines as to how they want their affairs managed should they wind up unable to manage their affairs. We need to do much more in that area to get across the message that this procedure is available. As someone practising in the legal world, I find that people come to me when the person is a borderline case and it is unclear whether he or she has dementia or not. We then try to get reports from doctors to ascertain if it is safe to get documents signed. In nearly 50% of cases, it is too late to get that enduring power of attorney assigned. We need to let the public know that this procedure is available.

I also welcome the many people in the Visitors' Gallery and thank them for their work and for putting the pressure on us to deliver in this area. Pressure needs to be applied to us to ensure we can provide a better back-up support mechanism for people.

Dementia is not necessarily confined to people over a certain age. Over 4,500 people under 65 have dementia. I remember canvassing in one election, knocking on a door and being asked in so I could discuss a particular problem with a member of the family. The husband of this person was only in his mid-30s but was in full-time care as a result of developing Alzheimer's disease or dementia at a very early age. The woman had four children under the age of 12. It was absolutely frightening to think that there were no answers to the problems she faced for a long time. It is not confined to an older age group and we also need proper systems of support for affected people in younger age categories. We need to be conscious of this to ensure we do not ignore them in developing any policy changes.

This morning, I attended the launch of a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit about health care. We are reacting to problems as they arise rather than looking at them before they arise and carrying out long-term planning. We need to be proactive about screening and making sure people go for medical checks, not because they suddenly have pain or a problem but because they should have regular medical checks. We need to promote this more. People have a policy of only going to a doctor when they have a problem whereas we should be encouraging six-month or 12-month checks where problems can be dealt with far earlier.

Screening has been introduced in Abu Dhabi across the country and 95% of the population have been screened. Reports have been given to every individual setting out the lifestyle changes he or she needs to make. We need to be more proactive in respect of our health care policy in this area and in getting people to look at their lifestyles, making sure they get proper advice and helping them change those lifestyles so that the cost of medical care will automatically be reduced.

This is a very important topic and I fully support the motion tabled by the Labour Party group. It is very comprehensive in an area where we need to bring about changes. I know those changes will occur with the Minister of State's help and we will all be behind him in bringing about the required change.