Minister told to ‘get a grip’ on home help cuts

Embattled Health Minister James Reilly needs to “get a grip” on the issue of home help cuts, Labour party chairman Colm Keaveney has warned.

Coalition tensions over the issue burst into the open as 3,000 people took to the streets of Castlebar, the Taoiseach’s home turf, to express anger at the cuts.

Uproar has been sparked by HSE moves to slash €8m from the home care bill — with some vulnerable people only being told of their cut in service via an answerphone message.

Mr Keaveney said: “The Health Minister needs to get a grip on the situation.

“The new budget is going to be a great challenge in health, we need to ensure that frontline services are not affected.

Mr Keaveney said the public would be more receptive to cuts if they started “seeing bankers go to jail”.

Another Labour TD said: “The home help issue caused a lot of anger at the parliamentary party meeting last week and it was made quite clear to Eamon Gilmore that we wanted action on this.”

Community groups from across the north west marched on Mr Kenny’s constituency office to show their disapproval that 500,000 hours have been cut from the home help service this year.

Campaigners warn that the move will not save the HSE money as it will force many elderly people into much more expensive institutional care.

With just over a week to go until the budget, Public Expenditure Reform Minister Brendan Howlin has insisted he will not cut pay for “the vast bulk” of public sector workers in the looming Croke Park 2 deal.

However, he said he is determined to slash an extra €1bn off the State pay bill by 2015.

Mr Howlin said public servants need to “work longer, and more cleverly and in different, smart ways”.

Mr Howlin is already seeking to cut public sector pay by €3.3bn through compulsory redundancies.

Mr Howlin steered clear of criticising Dr Reilly for the health department overspend which is set to hit €400m by year’s end.

It saw Mr Howlin announce an emergency health budget despite repeated assurances from Mr Kenny that such a move would not be necessary.

The minister said much of the problem stemmed from the creation of the HSE as a “huge health edifice” which needed major reform as it had “obscured financial management at ground level”.

The health minister’s job was to “drill down, to disaggregate all of that duplication so that every euro is spent in the area in which we expect it to be spent”, Mr Howlin told RTÉ.