Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The State must encourage, support and enable people to think ahead and not to do so through one Department. One of the main recommendations was that the Department of the Taoiseach would take the lead and help people to think ahead.

Throughout the report, surveys and research the centrality of all arguments, and I have spent six years as a Senator, always comes back to the decency and dignity of how we are acknowledged and how our self-worth and self-respect is regarded, especially when human frailty, illness and life loss comes to our door. We need comfort, food, financial security, communication, warmth, transport, community care, the arts, lack of anxiety around loneliness, education, funeral and fuel surety, adaptive home environments, human rights, and living well with value and meaning until one dies. These are the issues that kept cropping up - living well until we die.

Why did the State second rate the power of community? I do not know why. The State continues to do so. It does not mean to do so but continues to do so. We live communally and locally. We do not live nationally. We die communally and locally. We do not die nationally. We want to die in our own homes. We talk about rural regeneration but at the same time strip away services. Planning permission is given carte blancheto globalisation within small towns and villages. We do not prioritise the human being as the core of all creativity and communication. We are now not likely to die at home or even live in our homes as we age because the State’s policy is geared towards building nursing homes. Community care is what people want not nursing homes. Despite our greatest and most hoped for final wish we keep building more nursing homes. Do Members know what that does? It teaches people how to be frail. That is what it does.

We have no such thing as architectural expectations. We do not expect the environment in which we live to be beautiful. We have no power over our houses. We have no power over trees, shrubs, where we can sit or what we can look at. We have no power but the banks have the power to decide how much interest one pays over one's lifetime.

It is everybody's right to be around environmental beauty. It is health particularly when one faces one's own mortality. That right has been eroded. When politics does not prioritise the human being as the core of all creation and communication in heart and head, when it ceases to understand the human need for a qualitative way of life, a good death and a compassionate place for those who are left behind, then politics ceases to be of value. That is why politics has become valueless. People do not trust politicians. Throughout all of my research, and all of the days and nights I spent with Ms Caroline Lynch, Dr. John Weafer and Angela Edghill, the following constantly arose - the need for a human being to have value and meaning.

The second thing that arose was the power of the arts. Music, drama, poetry and visual arts were platforms for hope, courage and joy. There is also the transformative effects of the power of personal conversation, private feeling and public expression. All of this acted as a way to navigate through the most appalling times of our lives. However, at the same time the Department of Education and Skills gave 25 points to mathematics but did not do the same for visual art.When I am at the worst time in my life, I will not be looking to algebra to help me out. NGOs are exhausted asking for help, making suggestions, doing things creatively and doing things imaginatively. They are constantly ignored because good practice is consistently and constantly subsumed by territory. That is what happens in politics. We have lost the landscape vision. I am offering the Minister a platform because I know she has ability. I do not believe in gender quotas but I believe in the truth that women can impart at times. I believe the Minister has a unique facility to take on aspects of this, run with it and see what she can do. Human beings are called to meaning. We are called to do more than function. We are value-giving people and meaning has collapsed.

I am nearly finished and I thank the Acting Chairman for his indulgence. The report on dying, death and bereavement informs us across all the Departments about isolation, fuel poverty, community care cutbacks, funeral costs and depression. The director of the safeguarding committee, Patricia Rickard-Clarke, is in the Gallery. Financial fraud is being perpetrated on the elderly. The Minister should carry out a spot check on whether pension payments that are being collected for our elders or for people who cannot collect them themselves are being used for the right reason. That has never been done. The previous Minister, now Taoiseach, was talking about a different kind of fraud. Is the money given to older people being used for the right reasons when they cannot collect it themselves? We have the ignoring and burying of elder ethics and rights. Questions must be asked and changes must be made.

The idea of the wicker weave on the front cover was to weave the concept of dying, death and bereavement across all Departments, not in a joyless or macabre way but in a way that Departments would see it as relevant and that it was their business. It is all of our businesses and central to how we think and develop all our policy. It could chart a way forward for all Departments - a life course, living well until one dies, and the right to a good death, a landscape vision of the whole life within a whole State. It is the reason I am a Senator.

How we die is as important as the irrefutable fact that we will. This report is the beginning of a national conversation. It is difficult and challenging but it is timely. It is one that may mark us out as a Republic which is 100 years old. I recommend the report to the House and to each Department to see where their relevance lies and what they can do.

It is an irrefutable fact that we will leave this planet and we should leave it well. We are always talking about how great it is to be born, become educated, get married and have a life here, but it must be a good place from which to leave. Those who are left behind should not be traumatised for the rest of their lives because of their leaving and how it was brought about when things could have been better.

I recommend the report to the House.