Tipperary TD Mattie Mc Grath has slammed the government for not property tackling the growing Home Help support waiting list crisis as the Taoiseach misleads the Dáil when challenged.
Challenging the Taoiseach on the floor of the Dail earlier today (Tuesday 28th September), Deputy Mc Grath stated:
“New data I obtained through a parliamentary reply confirms that the HSE and the Department of Health are allowing 2,156 people to languish on the home help support waiting lists across the country.”
“Clearly, the supply of home help services is not keeping pace with demand. This means there are likely to be further extensions in waiting lists, a diversion in demand to provide operators and substitution with alternatives such as long-term residential care and acute hospital care.”
“In 2019, 24.7 million home help hours were provided in home support care. This year the HSE National Service Plan provides for a reduced provision of 23.67m home support hours. This drop of almost 1 million hours comes at a time when demand for the services is growing.”
“Even though the overall hourly allocation has dropped this year, the HSE have been allowed to only allocate under 11.5 million hours up to the end of July, despite the massive waiting lists.”
“The delays in processing home help applications is a huge cause of unnecessary stress and anxiety for elderly people and their families. The response made available to me, from the HSE parliamentary response confirms that of the 2,156 people on the waiting list, 1,460 are new applicants and 696 are existing recipients requiring additional support.”
“A staggering 894 people are on the waiting list in south Tipperary, Carlow/Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford alone. This means that this region now accounts for 42 per cent of the total number of people on the national waiting list.”
“I Raised the matter with the Taoiseach today, hoping to have the issue investigated, addressed and a strategy put in place to solve the issue. Instead, the Taoiseach gave a flippant response, which can only be described as an insult to every single person on the waiting list.”
“Scandalously, the Taoiseach proceeded to mislead the Dail on this important matter, prompted by Minister of State for Health Mary Butler, who herself demonstrated that she is utterly unaware to what is occurring in her own department.”
“The Taoiseach stated a categoric mistruth on the floor of the Dáil, when he stated that no one was on the home help waiting list in south Tipperary. In fact, this evening there are 118 people of the list in south Tipperary, which was again confirmed to me by the head of older people services in the area, Barbara Murphy.”
“I am appalled that the Taoiseach would try and use this important issue to score cheap political points.”
“Such responses from the government, aimed at hiding the facts and government failure are unacceptable. In fact, it undermines our public service and democracy. Unfortunately, these falsehoods are becoming all too common from this Taoiseach as he is increasingly more interested in narrow political point scoring than in tackling real issues that impact upon ordinary people,” concluded Deputy Mc Grath.
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