Madam, – The Minister for Health announced that there would be cuts of up to €1 billion in the HSE in budget 2010. As she confirmed, 70 per cent of the HSE’s annual expenditure is spent on wages and wages cannot be reduced further as a result of the Croke Park agreement. Therefore, I feel I am being realistic when I conclude the €1 billion worth of cuts will come predominantly from frontline patient services both in the nation’s hospitals and in the community.
As a result of my own experience I can also confirm that the HSE has been an inefficient failure from the beginning. As the Irish Hospital Consultants Association described it recently, it is “dysfunctional and disconnected”, and I can confirm this to be true.
My mother has Alzheimer’s disease and I was her sole carer in the family home for six years, by choice. I have no siblings and there were no other family members to help. I wanted to keep my mother at home for as long as possible but, as her disease progressed, caring for her became more difficult and she needed 24-hour supervision. I applied for the infamous Home Care Package in 2006. Our only income was my mother’s pension and my carer’s allowance.
After rigorous means-testing and an inspection by a nurse from the HSE, we were approved for the package but only given €120 per week. This would have bought me approximately six hours’ help per week.
I was caring for my mother 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I even had to sleep in the same bed with her so that I could keep an eye on her during the night. I was depressed, stressed and exhausted but the HSE was not prepared to give me any further assistance. The only help which I could access was four hours on alternate Wednesdays from the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. And all this at a time when Ireland had unprecedented budget surpluses and was one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Eventually my own health broke down and I had no choice but to put my mother into long-term care in a public hospital. Her fee there was €120 per week. The HSE paid for the balance of the cost of her care which was in the region of €2,000 per week.
Therefore, the HSE was prepared to pay €1,880 per week to keep my mother in residential care but not prepared to give me any more than €120 to care for her at home. If I had received even €600 per week from the HSE I could have paid for adequate help to assist me in caring for my mother and to give me some time off and I could have kept her out of long- term care for at least a further 12 months, something which I really wanted to do. Penny-wise, pound- foolish, in the extreme.
This is only one example of the gross inefficiency which has always existed within the HSE.
The cuts to health services in 2011 will, without a doubt, be exceptionally harsh and cruel and will inflict unspeakable hardship and suffering on the poor and the sick. This has gone far beyond an economic issue now and has become an urgent human rights issue. This simply cannot be tolerated any longer. – Yours, etc,
A chara, – Minister for Health Mary Harney warns of up to €1 billion to be cut from the health budget. Such cuts will affect frontline staff and patients and not those un-elected pen pushers who lack accountability. The health service in Ireland is withering – hospital closures by stealth, mass exodus of nurses and doctors and, ironically, if the current trend is to continue, the pen-pushers will have nothing to administer. More like Health Service Executioners than Executive. – Is mise,
Madam, – Europe’s best-paid Minister for Health stepped out of her chauffeur-driven limousine and announced €1 billion of health cuts. Discuss. – Yours, etc,