I fear my own government

To add to Victoria White’s piece (Irish Examiner, Sept 6) in addition to the 700,000 hour cuts to home help hours there was an earlier cut of 700,000, and in addition home helps are told not to talk to their patients.

Don’t they realise that sometimes the home helps are the only people that they see all day, and not all old people are in receipt of gilt-edged defined pension benefits al la the Croke Park agreement, and not every old person has a home valued at €2m?

Some of us, as I did, went to work in the 50s not quite 14 years old to help out our struggling parents.