Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Does Senator Boyhan accept that he has put on the record of the House something that is incorrect? It is incorrect. Maybe Senator Clonan would grace us with his presence, so we can ensure that is corrected. Otherwise there would have been no need for him to call me out and thank me for leading on it to make sure that it went through to the next section.

Anyway, there are other important things rather than having to correct misinformation in this House, namely that this is a good motion. I completely support it. When we talk about the care economy, we also need to talk about care economics. As an organisation, Family Carers Ireland is incredible. It is incredible in how it supports its membership. Some of the support they need to provide should not, in fact, be needed. If the HSE was doing its job in every way, in fact it would not be needed. Two weeks ago I participated in Andrea Gilligan's programme on Newstalk. People were phoning in to tell of their plight. One woman could not go to her own mother's funeral because she could not get respite. Another woman rang in, who I found out afterwards happened to be a childhood friend. After ten years of asking for support from the HSE, and being left with little to no support they were left with no choice, in a desperate situation with their precious son, but to decide not to take him home from respite. They could not face another day at home. That was the extent of that woman's story. I have spoken with Ger Harris on a number of occasions since. The HSE is now acting, but where was it for the ten years that family was in a desperate situation? Across the country, parents and family members are at the end of their tether, desperate for the State and the HSE to provide care for their children. If the care were provided in a timely fashion in support of these families, it would be more cost effective, and the care economics would be much better were that the case. We have a situation where section 39 organisations now have to go on strike to finally get equality and parity under the law in their terms and conditions of employment. They are providing the backbone. I work with many of them in my own constituency of Dublin South-Central. Organisations like WALK do extraordinary work, but they cannot retain staff because they cannot offer the same situation as the HSE, or the Section 38 agencies. These situations are not good enough.

We have the peculiarity where we talk about care and we talk about people with disabilities. However, which Department is actually running the show? On the one hand, it is the Department of Health which oversees the HSE. We have the Minister of State at the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, with responsibility for disability, who had to get up and walk out of a meeting in order to get something. We have all of the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan's excellent work. That is more easily ringfenced because it is clearly in education, but she does not always get the supports she needs, which need to be provided by the disability network teams in communities. They are just left to flounder in Dublin South-Central. We have had to shut down one of the teams due to lack of resourcing, and the lack of staff actually showing up. None of that is good enough. When we talk about caring and supporting carers, we need to make sure we are delivering the services in a timely fashion, so that there is not just a care economy but good economics around this. By providing supports for children, especially young children, in a timely fashion we are making good investments in the future. We are supporting those children in not bypassing developmental stages without the key supports they deserve.In another situation I am dealing with at the moment, one social worker and one occupational therapist might affirm a funding stream for a family but following a change of personnel, the next one takes it away. There is no consistency here. Where is the accountability? While I applaud the motion, there is a lot to be done. With due respect to the Minister of State, I think that someone from the Department of Health should have been here to be answerable on this motion. It is not reasonable that the Minister of State is expected to answer on it because the Department of Health is the driver here and it is the HSE that is failing in a great many ways without any accountability.