Cuts to home help hours announced this year by the HSE will result in premature admissions to nursing homes, longer stays in acute hospitals and “absolute anguish” for families, a campaign group for the elderly has said.
Older and Bolder this afternoon handed a letter and petition to the chairman of the Oireachtas Health Committee Jerry Buttimer asking the Government to reverse HSE cuts to some 1 million home help hours.
“This is already a really thinly stretched service,” the group’s director Patricia Conboy said. “It is a totally illogical cut… On a human level and on an economic level it makes no sense.” She was speaking at a demonstration outside Leinster House.
Maureen Carolan (74), who receives three-and-a-half home help hours a week, said she “couldn’t manage without them.” It was unfair to cut care services for the thousands of people who worked all their lives to “keep this country going.”
The late effects of polio have confined her to a wheelchair and she had cancer earlier in life. But the cuts to the home help hours are “the last straw - this has hurt me more than all the diseases I got.”
She said she would be willing to go on hunger strike if the Government refused to reverse the cuts.
Madeline Curran (74), said it was “morally wrong” for TDs who “turn up to a well-paid job” to allow cuts to services for vulnerable elderly people.
Mabel Gargan, who said she was 90-and-a-half, described cuts that affect poorer people as unfair. It wouldn’t be so bad, she said, “if they also took something from the fellows at the top.”
A number of opposition politicians came out to meet demonstrators including former junior minister for health Roisín Shortall who last month resigned her position and the Labour party whip following disagreements with her senior Minister James Reilly.
