Protesters to march on Dáil over cutbacks to home help
The Home Help/Home Care Action Group has organised the public show of anger after 950,000 hours of support to vulnerable elderly people and severely ill children were axed from the system this year.
The HSE said the cutback, which includes a 500,000-hour reduction at the start of the year and a 450,000-hour cut confirmed last month, is essential to bringing down the health service budget.
It stressed the system will do everything it can to ensure those in most need are not affected, and that existing recipients will still receive some form of care.
John Lyons, spokesman for the People before Profit-connected Home Help/Home Care Action Group hit out at the claim.
He warned that the “cruel nature” of the cost-saving home-help cuts are making “life and death issues” even more difficult to address.
He said the cuts will ultimately cost the taxpayer more, not less, to resolve.
“It [the cut] makes no sense in any way, shape or form. These are pretty savage plans and [Health Minister James] Reilly’s been keeping his head down, not making any political comment about them the last couple of weeks,” Mr Lyons said.
“The claim it will save €8m is a false economy because the people in need of help will just go to hospital or nursing homes instead, which costs more.
“They say they will review cases on an individual basis, but these cuts are being imposed now so do they have the staff to do this?
“They’re also very cute with their language and say existing clients will still have some service, but I know of an 84-year-old woman whose home help is being cut from two hours a week to two half-hours.
“That’s a service, but it’s completely inadequate. Surely to God there is some other way to save money than going after vulnerable old people and children with life-threatening conditions, who are going to be hugely affected,” he said.
The protest, expected to be attended by over a thousand people, will begin at 3pm. It will travel from the Spire on O’Connell St to Leinster House, where it will demand that “the Government and HSE immediately cease attacking the elderly, sick, and disabled”.
The protest comes after the first session of a two-day Sinn Féin Dáil motion criticising the home-help cuts was debated last night — a move mirroring a unanimous Oireachtas Health Committee call for the cuts to be reconsidered.
By Fiachra Ó Cionnaith
A 93-year-old who survived a Second World War German U-boat torpedo attack has hit out at HSE home-help cutbacks — and warned he would not be alive today if it wasn’t for the support.
Frank Whyte, from Sunday’s Well in Cork City and now living in Schull, has received one hour’s help six days a week since his wife Denise passed away five years ago.
On May 12, 2010, the survivor of the 1943 Irish Oak assault — which saw the neutral Irish merchant vessel attacked by a German U-boat in the Atlantic — fell asleep in his front-room with a pan of oil on the stove.
At the time unknowingly suffering from double pneumonia, he awoke to a smoke-filled house and an out-of-control kitchen fire.
Frank and his neighbour Tony Payne, who contacted the Irish Examiner on his behalf, said it was sheer luck his home help arrived as the incident was unfolding — rescuing the 93-year-old from the flames in the process.
Without the intervention, the elderly man — who flew around the world for 40 years with British Airways — would have died needlessly in an avoidable house fire.
Speaking about the nationwide cutbacks, Frank said they are destroying a vital community service.
“I’m very happy with the set-up right now. They started coming to see my wife six years ago when she had her leg amputated from ulcers, then when she died they looked after me.
“They get me my pills, keep an eye on things, it’s really a terrific service. There’s too many TDs who want to grab as much as they can and we don’t need the Seanad, but they want to come after me? I don’t understand that.”
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