Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I request a debate on how elderly parents are cared for. I have spoken to older people who have told me that they are genuinely afraid of becoming ill and entering public hospitals. They are afraid they will be seen as a burden rather than as people and as occupiers of beds rather than patients. More darkly, elderly people sometimes fear that they will enter hospital and never come back out.Routine illness can rapidly become life-threatening in later life, and elderly patients sometimes feel doctors will hasten death rather than provide appropriate care. These fears are not groundless. In July 2013 the British Department of Health phased out from NHS hospitals a practice called the Liverpool Care Pathway, a protocol whereby elderly people suffering from non-lethal illnesses whose conditions deteriorated were forced to suffer days of dehydration or to be sedated, leaving them unable to ask for food or drink. This was how British hospitals dealt with ill and elderly patients for more than a decade. It often appears to me that we are in danger of copying the mistakes of the British, except that we sometimes wait until they have dropped certain bad practices before we adopt them. Whether or not the withdrawal of care is medically justified, it should always be based on the best interests of patients, not on some prevailing ideology or economic calculation. Care for older people presents particular issues. Aging patients can deteriorate rapidly, and we need a charter of patients' rights with particular emphasis on care for older people. A number of EU states have adopted legislation on patients' rights.