I thank all of the people involved in home care and all of the home helps around the county of Kerry and around all of the other counties. I know the great work they do in the confined time and space they are given to do it. While I welcome regulation, and the Bill states it will ensure home care is regulated and standards are in place for all home care support for all who need it, the question I ask the Minister of State is whether there is a deficiency in the amount of home help that older people are getting. Will this be highlighted in the Bill? Is the Bill catering for this? I know of too many people who are not getting enough home help. They are left behind on weekends and holidays. When the staff, who are entitled to their holidays, go on their own holidays and things are arranged, no one is there to take up the slack. These elderly people are then otherwise compromised. Will the Bill ensure they are looked after properly? This is what it should do. We need an awful lot more home help. When someone goes into University Hospital Kerry with a virus or whatever it is, they fully intend to come home but they may have to go to a community hospital or district hospital in the various places. A home care plan should be put in place at the time they leave University Hospital Kerry because they will spend a certain number of days, a week or two weeks at the very most, in a community hospital or district hospital. This is not happening. This is where the void and hurt happens. The family may be not available or may be far away. If we want to keep these old people, and these people who are not able to manage for themselves, in their own homes then some home care plan should be put in place at the point in time they leave University Hospital Kerry. It should not be left to the managers of the district hospitals, who are asked to make the bed available for someone else after a week or two. The conveyor belt keeps going on, people do not stop needing help and another person will need to go into the bed. The home help should be in place and we should have enough home helps. I know young fellows who have trained to be home helps and I have often asked them whether they are working and they have told me they were not. At the same time, I know of elderly people who cannot get home help. It was awarded to them and allocated to them but no one showed up because we keep getting told there is no staff. I have known these cases and I cannot understand it. If the Bill is going to mean anything, this issue needs to be dealt with to explain whether or not home help is available and whether staff are trained up. If they are not trained up, they should be. As other Deputies have said, maybe we are not paying the home helps enough. Maybe too much pressure is being put on them. I hear they are being told to go here and there and to the next person. It hurts me very much when I hear that a home help is not allowed to do certain things for elderly people who may be not agile or mobile enough to do something for themselves. I know that some of them do so anyway. As I said, they are not supposed to be doing some of these things and this is ridiculous. We need to develop a model like they have in Denmark. There are hardly any nursing homes there. Why is this? It is because everyone is looked after in their own homes where it costs a lot less. The Government needs to look into this a whole lot more and go into it in greater depth. I appreciate that it is looking after the issue of people not being properly trained or Garda vetted and there could be other problems. It will look after that side of it but we need to work harder on the side of it whereby the patient, elderly person or disabled person is being left without home help. We have other issues in Kerry also which all concern elderly people. We have a new community hospital in Killarney that has been finished for almost a year. It is a community hospital and nursing unit. It is there on the side of the bypass but it has not been opened. When that is opened, we are supposed to develop the old district hospital and St. Columbanus Home to have a primary care centre and more respite beds. People are being told that where carers mind people at home and have to be with them all the time they are entitled to four weeks of respite in the year. Those people are entitled to a bit of respite, but they are not getting it because we do not have the beds for respite in Killarney, Kenmare, Listowel, Dingle, Cahersiveen or anywhere else. We do not have enough respite beds. Then we are waiting for a minor injuries unit in the town of Killarney. This could be put into the old buildings and it could be a new modern unit. The space is there but we are waiting for the new hospital to open. What is the cause of the delay? Has the Department the staff engaged? Has the Department found the staff? Those are the questions people are asking. Carers provide invaluable service. Some of them were terrorised with the notion that the Revenue Commissioners were going after them. Many of them were wondering what they would be done for and what they might be caught for. These things are terrible. The amount of lines the media gave it was totally out of balance and out of kilter when most of it is not true at all. One of the things we looked for in our programme to support the Government was the abolition of the means test because many of those who care for their people at home are doing it voluntarily and they would do it anyway if they were to get nothing for it. It is very unfair. No one could put a price on the amount of money these family carers are saving the State. They need to be looked after. The means test is totally out of kilter. We are helping them in a small way this year. It is supposed to be abolished over five years. I am asking the Minister of State to expedite that. For elderly people I see a great need for therapy and for physiotherapy. When old people go into hospital, they have other problems like viruses and they have different issues. We do not have enough physiotherapists in our hospitals. What would be wrong with having physiotherapists call to people's homes? If a person cannot move around or if there is something stiff with their leg or hand, physiotherapy works for a lot of people and it will work for those people as well. We would save a lot of money if we were to help people with those therapies and ensure they get them in their home or wherever they are. Whatever hospital or whatever care setting it is, we should be providing more physiotherapy for those people. There are lots of other therapies that elderly people would benefit from because when they are not moving around at all, they seize up and the problem gets worse. Two people are needed to operate hoists and such things whereas if the elderly people were kept going as good as they could be and for as long as they could, we would save the State a lot of money. We need to look into a lot of those things. Why do we not look at the Denmark model to see what is happening there and why they have hardly any use for nursing homes? I appreciate the great work our nursing homes are doing. Indeed, our community hospitals like Kenmare Community Hospital and St. Columbanus Community Hospital do great work for long-term care as well as short-term care. People are very appreciative of those settings as well as the private care that is provided. In County Kerry we have great private nursing homes and they are doing great work but they are all under savage pressure and it is hard at any stage to get a bed for someone. When people are ready to go home, we should have a home care package. There is a lot of talk about it, but it does not materialise. When the person is a good bit better and can and should go home, they do not seem to be able to do so. Even though they are awarded a package and the hours are allocated, it does not materialise for whatever reason. When I meet the youngsters who are trained up, they say they have not got any work yet. When I meet the elderly person or their family, they say they were awarded home help on a certain date but no one has arrived yet. In line with this new Bill, which is being brought in to protect and look after other measures, I am asking the Minister of State to get some section working to see how long people are without home help. How long after they leave the university hospital and go to the district hospital are they waiting for home help? That is what is happening. What happens when it gets out of order altogether? They have to apply for the fair deal scheme and try to go into a nursing home. The family does not want that, the elderly person certainly does not want it and the Government should not want it because it is costing a lot more. That is what I am saying. There is some good in the Bill, but I hope a lot more good will come out of it because we need to ensure anyone who needs home help and is awarded it gets it. It should be included in this Bill that someone is going around to see what is happening and why people are not getting home help.

Sentiment score: 0.13