Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

Cavan will be back shortly. We nearly did it this year. I wish all colleagues in the House a wonderful summer and great recess after a year of multiple elections and frenetic levels of activity. I wish our wonderful staff of the House a great summer also. Our ushers and all of the staff of Leinster House do a great job and provide such wonderful support. One cannot help but remember with fondness today the great Martin Groves who has now been very brilliantly replaced by Bridget, but we do miss Martin. He was a great man and we hope he continues to enjoy a good retirement.

Those of us of a certain vintage remember many great social revolutions, changes and advances over the years. Among the many I have seen and that were great was the introduction of carers to the homes of older people and people who are sick. This generation now take that for granted and assume it was always that way. It was not always so. Like everything else it is not flawless but a great initiative recently was raising the income limit by €200 whereby people can have carers. That is a huge reform and we have to move to a situation where carers are provided irrespective of income. My understanding is that it is contained in our programme for Government and we should work towards that.

The second thing we must look at is the provision of an adequate panel of carers in each county. When the hours are allocated throughout the country there is a shortage of actual personnel to do them and that means some reforms of the salary, contracts and basis on which carers work. That will need to be radically looked at. I ask the Leader to bring this to the Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, to see if we could have some debate or discussion on this in the autumn to examine whether the panel can be developed. We need to improve income for carers and also further improve income limits. We need to improve the supply of carers. We also should put home care on a statutory footing, like the fair deal scheme, so people are assured under the law they can get home care and have the option to be cared for at home. With the demographic structure of our country now, this whole debate and area is all the more pertinent now. If you take humanity, well-being and wellness out of it, from a purely cold economic perspective, in terms of money, it is the logical thing to do.It is the cheapest option, if also the preferred option. I thank the Cathaoirleach.