Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Will the Leader invite the Minister for Health to the House because I would like us to have a debate on our ageing population? The demographic of our population is quite outstanding. It is alarming that 65% of us will be over 65 in the next 15 years and we need to plan for it.

The reason we fail in Ireland is that we do not plan. Homelessness is a very complex problem. One of the reasons it is so bad at the moment is that we did not plan. A total of 68% of us do not even have a will. We do not even plan personally, let alone as organisations or as a country. We did not have a plan for Irish Water. We do not have a plan for housing and we did not plan ahead for transport. We need a plan for our ageing population. We are institutionalising far too many of our older people and not giving them independent living. According to the Alone report, of the 36,000 people in very good institutions and care homes, 12,000 did not need to be there. I suggest that we need the Minister in here because we could create a fair deal within homes, not just within institutions or within care homes. I see my job in the Seanad as some kind of a Government adviser on how to plan and how to exercise more perception, and how to exercise more strategic thinking for the future and we need the Minister in here to help him to do just that in our last session.