Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to alert Senators, Deputies and councillors around the country that we have a significant problem with healthcare assistants. The reason for this problem is that we do not have enough of them and the reason we do not have enough of them is because they cannot come to this country under what we call critical skills, which involves eligibility to come and work here. There is a lack of suitable staff in our voluntary, private and public nursing homes. I do not know whether or not anybody has noticed but we have an ageing population. We are getting older and those who are becoming frail and feeble in their homes, communities or nursing homes need healthcare assistants. They need healthcare assistants to feed, wash, turn and dress them and to be their friends because they are there 24 hours a day. We cannot get candidates in Ireland for these positions and we are looking outside the EU. We are looking to the EU but it has its own problems.

I am calling on the House to think about this. I have written to all the Ministers about it and am trying to organise some way of changing eligibility. Did Senators know that a person can come here as a bone person within an agricultural setting or that a person working in a meat factory or a sheet metal worker is eligible, but a person is not eligible if he or she is going to deal with a human being for 24 hours every day of every week of every month of every year who happens to be in the home or community or trapped in their own homes? It is extremely important that we have a pilot scheme with India and Mauritius, particularly India. Our Taoiseach is from an Indian background. The greatest doctors and nursing and medical staff have come from India and perhaps it is time we set up a pilot programme to see how we can work this.

We should come together across all divides here to address this problem because most of the young people who come to help must either re-apply for visas and are ineligible because they do not come under what are called critical skills. It is very simple. We could expand the definition and organise our lives as we grow older. We need these people. When people talk to me about immigration, they do not know what they are talking about. We need people to come from other countries to help us stay alive on our own island as we get older and as our children grow up and get educated. What are we talking about? There are all the wrong inferences about immigration. I am sorry the Seanad is not fuller but will the Senators think about this because I will pursue it over the next two or three weeks?

I second Senator McDowell's amendment to the Order of Business. I think that thing is insane.