Letters to the Editor: Hiqa could be the right body to regulate homecare providers
Letter-writer Killian Brennnan urges better regulation of homecare, suggesting the remit of the Health Information and Quality Authority could be expanded to include the sector. Stock picture: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
The HSE is using taxpayer monies to outsource homecare packages after all. Without proper oversight, the potential for abuse and below par care is alarmingly high.
This independent body would be responsible for setting and enforcing quality standards, investigating complaints, and ensuring transparency within the sector. Hiqa, with its existing expertise in healthcare oversight, could be a strong candidate for this role, but its mandate would need to be expanded specifically to encompass homecare.
This includes factoring in travel time within care worker schedules to ensure clients receive the full hour of care they are entitled to and deserve.
Regular inspections, client satisfaction surveys, and mandatory training for care workers are crucial steps in ensuring the highest possible standards of care are consistently delivered.
Review pay structures and working conditions within the private sector to address issues surrounding recruitment and retention.
The wellbeing of our most vulnerable citizens, particularly older adults and those requiring homecare support, should be a top priority. By taking decisive action to address the lack of oversight in the homecare sector, we can safeguard their dignity, wellbeing, and the responsible use of taxpayer funds.
This matter deserves urgent attention and reforms to ensure quality, accountable, and ethical homecare services.
I write with regard to the article — ‘Flooding works in Dunmanway hampered by endangered freshwater pearl mussel’ (Irish Examiner, February 7).
Having travelled this road daily for the past 45 years and expecting flooding on the Macroom side of Ardcahan Bridge repeatedly, it appears the approach road from the Macroom side where flooding occurs is close to one metre lower than the surface of bridge, therefore raising the approach road with a water underpass may alleviate the problem without causing any damage whatever to pearl mussels.
On checking recorded water levels at Ardcahan Bridge it appears that raising the approach road would remove the majority of high water incidents on the main approach road.
The roadside diversion for all traffic during periods of flood is a major safety hazard as the byroads are totally unsuitable for two-way traffic, huge lorries and trailers, and often in hours of darkness.
I have rarely seen the surface of the bridge impassable caused by flooding.
They came and took my brother and I did nothing to stop them. They came and took my sister and I did nothing to stop them. They came and took my children and I did nothing to stop them. And then they came to take me and there was no one left to stop them.
The Dunnes Stores workers showed the way in 1984. If our governments won’t do it, all sporting, art, culture, business, retail, and other organisations should stop their involvement in any goods and activity that Israel is involved in, in a national boycott action against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. BDS: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, supporting Palestinians.
Why is it that our society tends to view the physical and psychological aspects of ageing so negatively. Recently, Terry Prone was enthusiastically espousing the surgical removal of wrinkles on RTÉ’s The Today Show.
A face woven with wrinkles shows a tapestry of maturity and wisdom in my view. Why are these wonderful attributes much maligned in our society. It’s a shame. We need to have more inter-generational activities in Transition Year at second level whereby each generation mutually benefits.
Look at the portraits of Samuel Beckett and Vanessa Redgrave.
Their faces are beautiful because of, not in spite of, their wrinkles.
Real beauty comes from within.
One can only have sympathy and empathy for the noble Irish women’s basketball team in their accursed predicament this past while. The saddest thing is that they were pushed to fulfil their fixture by way of the potential fines accruing from declining to play.
Apparently now, it’s money considerations that win out no matter the humanitarian rights at stake.
The deliberate ‘victimised’ position pimped out by the Israeli side is becoming such a common ‘faux-ploy’ dished out to anyone who dares protest against Israel’s grotesque atrocities, (aka genocide).
It is contorted and distorted to mean ‘antisemitic’, whereas it patently and blatantly means precisely only the corrupted OTT aggressive posturing and reckless murderous
policies of the Israeli government — absolutely not Judaism.
It’s such an easy victimhood to draw on, when others identify and expose the incredulous inhumanity of the relentless Israeli actions ongoing without reprieve. Yes, for sure, Israel was gravely sinned against, but does that give carte-blanche to commit a thousand more sins of death and destruction?
Its actions, by any moral or ethical measure, is absolutely scurrilous, and yet we continue to do business and fulfil our sporting fixtures, all for the sake of filthy lucre. What price a moral compass?
Of course, such cowardly camouflaging of human rights violations when there’s lucrative business to be done is a widespread global practice, and Ireland is in the thick of such abject chicanery. Israel is forever being accommodated with massive financial and armament donations, so that whatever it gets up to it will always be funded to the hilt by the US and others, who ply their ‘proxy’ wars of attrition for their own selfish ends.
Currently, Antony Blinken is doing his hypocritical ‘Kissinger-ambivalent-best’ to ride the two horses of war and peace, scuttling here and there around the Middle East, rather than demanding that Israel stop and stop now, not when.
But it’s US election year and the Blinken-Biden dodgy axis of duplicity won’t budge an inch for fear of running foul of its constituency support when presidential push comes to shove. And so it falls on the like of the Irish women’s basketball team to take the hit of ‘complicity’ in the warped shebang — all for the sake of a few shekels.
One thing that must always be remembered is any protest action against corrupt Israeli policy and warring wrongdoing, is not antisemitic.
It’s all to do with money, and its filthy tentacles which enwrap and trap the global discourse, leaving decency and decorum bygone bystanders.
Love will be in the air today, Valentine’s Day, a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love.
St Valentine, a third-century priest in the pagan Roman Empire, was imprisoned and martyred for marrying Christian couples.
All Christian denominations regard marriage as a sacred institution. Catholic marriage is a sacrament and a life-long union of an opposite-sex couple. For the marriage to be valid in civil law, a completed marriage registration form must be lodged with the civil registration service.
In a more secular Ireland, many couples opt for a civil law marriage. Since 2015, same-sex couples can legally marry with the same rights and obligations towards each other as opposite-sex married couples. In effect, civil law marriage is now available to all citizens.
Having done so well to provide same-sex marriage for those who craved it, the Government may be opening a Pandora’s box of legal and family disputes by needlessly including ‘durable relationships’ in its definition of family.
The term ‘durable relationships’ is insecure, uncertain, laissez-faire, and leaves one or both parties exposed in the event of a relationship break-up or death. Most of all, it’s unfair to any children of one, the other, or both adults in the relationship. All such problems can be avoided if the adult pair marry under civil law.
The Government had the bottle to provide civil law marriage for all its citizens. So, the term ‘durable relationships’ is an unnecessary complication when adult lovers of all ages and sexual orientations can tie the knot in a civil law marriage.
