Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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486. To ask the Minister for Health if he will consider establishing a forum which will consist of all the relevant stakeholders and will discuss how we care for our ageing population, and the provisions required to ensure proper care for those who require it. [26368/15]

Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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On-going consultation with all stakeholders and the public in general is already a standard feature of our approach across policy areas.

It is common practice to avail of external expertise when formulating new policies or approaches. The National Dementia Strategy is a case in point. This Strategy was prepared in the light of advice from a Group which included State agencies, representative groups, researchers and medical professionals and a similar Group has been established to monitor the implementation of the Strategy.

There is already a broad consensus on the direction that our approach to caring for older people should take, including the importance of allowing more older people to stay at home and in their own communities for as long as possible, the need to cater for people at the lowest appropriate level of complexity and the need to provide residential care when and if this is needed.

The decisions that remain to be taken are therefore less about what we be need to do, but about how to do it. This relates in a large part to resourcing and balancing of priorities within the health sector and within Government overall. This is not an area that can be readily progressed by the kind of forum that is proposed by the Deputy. Further, it would be inappropriate to delegate elements of public policy, possibly including budgetary policy, to any consultative forum, particularly where some of those represented may have a commercial vested interest in the outcome.