I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise on the Adjournment the ongoing threat to the elderly of evictions from nursing homes because of the failure of the Minister for Health and Children to allow health boards to pay subventions at rates to meet each individual set of circumstances.
Services for older people in Ireland fall short of adequate standards. They are characterised by huge gaps, by queues and waiting lists and by unaffordable costs. The facts are: the population aged over 65 in Ireland is growing rapidly and is forecast to increase by 400,000 by the year 2030, an increase of 50%; at present, less than half of full time carers receive any financial support from the State; access to long-stay residential care is highly arbitrary and inequitable and an adequate preventative health strategy has not been developed to manage the problems of older age.
Older people must be encouraged to live in their own homes and communities with the adequate supports available to them. In the Southern Health Board area there are 18,000 elderly people living alone and only 35% receive home help. In addition, there are currently only 187 public health nurses serving the entire population of elderly in the Southern Health Board region. Many families with an elderly relative very often find that the necessary support required to keep an elderly person at home is not there and the family is often left with no alternative but nursing home care. At the moment the total number of elderly receiving the nursing home subvention in the Southern Health Board region is 721. The average subvention is only £131 per week with families often struggling to make up the shortfall of up to £300 per week.
At present, less than half of full-time carers receive any financial support from the State. In the Southern Health Board area there are only 76 respite beds, which serve the entire elderly population. This week again patients fear that they are facing discharge from a private nursing home in Cork while, at the same time, families throughout the country are accumulating massive debts with private nursing homes simply because we have a Minister for Health and Children who 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 in a crisis where elderly people are being threatened with eviction and families are living in fear. The Minister is well aware of this serious situation but is failing to act.
The Minister publicly said in early June that he would not be bounced into a decision regarding enhanced subventions but his failure since then to make decisions means that elderly persons are afraid they will be bounced out of nursing homes. The Minister, who is a member of the Government with vast resources at his disposal, is effectively abandoning the elderly. The very people who built our economy are now 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 public hospitals are occupied by elderly people who cannot be discharged back home because they need nursing care. They cannot be accommodated in nursing homes because the beds are not available. This results in seriously sick people being unable to get into hospital and obtain treatment because of the occupied beds.
This situation is making the waiting list crisis even worse so I am now asking the Minister for Health and Children to take immediate decisions to increase allocations for health boards right throughout the country so that the nursing homes subvention scheme can be implemented as recommended by the Ombudsman's report, which was scathing in its criticism of the Minister and his Department. The Minister must also make immediate decisions on the expenditure review of the nursing homes subvention scheme undertaken by his Department in association with the Department of Finance and completed since last June. I also demand that the Minister guarantees here tonight that he will make the resources available to the health boards to implement the Ombudsman's recommendations in relation to the refund scheme for families who were obliged to sell family properties and exhaust family savings for their elderly parents and relations because of irregular decisions made by health boards arising from directives from the Department of Health and Children.
