Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also raise the looming crisis in home care allocations. We need an immediate debate on the issue and for the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Jim Daly, to hear the concerns of Senators from all areas as to how the current shortfall will impact on the most vulnerable in society. We need to make provision before this crisis worsens.

There are 6,000 waiting for home care supports. My Fianna Fáil colleague stated this does not look good for the Government. It certainly does not look good for the Government and it did not look good for Fianna Fáil when a previous Government cut 32,000 hours in County Mayo in one year alone. The issue does not look any better now, several years later.

There is a problem with recruitment and retention in home care caused by social welfare restrictions. If somebody does, say, one hour of home help in a day, all of his or her social welfare payments for that day are cut off. The Minister needs to examine arrangements that would allow home care workers to be able to provide care without being pushed further into poverty. They cannot take up this work because to do so would leave them worse off.

News that cuts lie ahead and that health spending is set to overrun again this year is causing considerable anxiety in my community and in communities across the country. It is hard to believe that yesterday we were here discussing a rainy-day fund to deal with exceptional circumstances. Surely a looming crisis in how we care for those who need an extra bit of help should allow us to dip into that fund. When the rainy-day fund legislation is back before the House, Senator Kieran O'Donnell will have a chance to accept amendments from Sinn Féin to allow moneys from the fund to be spent when crises such as this one arise.

It costs the State €6,000 per week to accommodate somebody in an acute bed, whereas it costs €160 per week for a home care support package. Surely to God somebody must ask how we can save money here. Money saved in the health service could be used to fund other vital parts of the service. The figures are cited show that there are huge inefficiencies. We have had entire debates in this House about inefficiencies and waste in health. It makes no sense that patients who are medically discharged are unable to return home because of the blunt instrument by which the HSE states it has run out of funding and can no longer provide home care supports for them. We need to hear from the Government that it understands the scale of the problem and an indication that it will not allow the list for those waiting for home help hours to grow further. Reassurance and forward planning are needed to avert a completely unnecessary problem. While the problem was created by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael does not need to continue to do the same.