I thank the House for the opportunity to raise this very important issue this evening. Elderly patients are being threatened with eviction from nursing homes because of the Minister's failure to make decisions regarding increased allocations to health boards to introduce an enhanced subvention scheme.
Eleven patients are, this week, facing discharge from a private nursing home in the Minister's constituency in Cork. Last week, an elderly man faced eviction from another nursing home in Cork. At the same time families throughout the country are accumulating massive debts with private nursing homes simply because the Minister is failing to make decisions on the review of the nursing homes subvention scheme undertaken by his Department in association with the Department of Finance.
The Minister's failure to make decisions means we are now facing a crisis whereby elderly people are being threatened with eviction and families are living in fear and trepidation. The Minister is well aware of the serious situation but is failing to act. He is on record saying he would not be bounced into a decision regarding enhanced subventions. His failure to make decisions means elderly people are effectively being bounced out of nursing homes. The Minister, who is a member of the Government with fat resources at its disposal, is effectively abandoning the elderly, the very people who built the economy. They are being left in a hopeless situation.
The Minister's failure to act has also brought about a situation where a high percentage of acute hospital beds in all our public hospitals are occupied by elderly people who cannot be discharged home or to nursing homes because of a lack of nursing care.
They cannot be accommodated in nursing homes because the beds are not available. Therefore, seriously sick people cannot get admission to hospital and cannot get treatment because the beds are occupied.
This situation is making the waiting list crisis even worse, so I now ask the Minister for Health and Children to take immediate decisions regarding increased allocations to the health boards to ensure that the nursing home subvention scheme can be implemented, as recommended in the Ombudsman's report which was scathing in its criticism of the Minister and his Department. The Minister must also take immediate decisions on the expenditure review of the scheme, recently undertaken by his Department in association with the Department of Finance.
Will the Minister indicate when he will make the resources available to the health boards, especially the Southern Health Board, where there is a crisis so that it can implement the Ombudsman's recommendations on the refund schemes to families who are obliged to sell family properties and exhaust family savings for their elderly parents and relations because of what may be termed irregular decisions by health boards as a result of directives from the Department of Health and Children? He is aware of the situation in Cork where 11 elderly people in their seventies and eighties are sick with worry because of the threat to their future. I urge him to make a decision on the allocation to the Southern Health Board so that their plight and the plight of dozens of families throughout the region can be resolved. These people are sick with worry because of the crisis that has arisen with regard to family resources.
