JOINT COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AND FAMILY AFFAIRS debate -
Thursday, 24 Jul 2003

Vol. 1 No. 11

Report on Long-Term Care.

Chairman

The next matter relates to study on the future financing of long-term care in Ireland. Deputy Crawford and a number of us attended when this was launched by the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Coughlan, along with the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, who was there in relation to another document on that day. This report is before us for consideration. It was received from the Department of Social and Family Affairs and is entitled A Study to Examine the Future Finances of Long-term Care in Ireland. It was circulated to members before the last meeting, on 9 July, and it was agreed at that meeting that we should consider it in more detail.

The clerk has been informed that officials from the Department of Social and Family Affairs could come before the committee to brief members on this report. I am sure members will be eager to be briefed on it because it is substantial. It ties in, of course, with some of the work this committee is doing. We now have almost 80 submissions on the position of full-time carers - which is the next item on the agenda - and we must decide how best to deal with it. In any event the report is complementary to the work we are doing.

Deputy Ring

I think, Chairman, the next item on the agenda is No. 3. We have to link the two of them.

Chairman

Yes.

Deputy Ring

Maybe we should have our own meeting on this, not now but in September or October, and bring in the officials on the same day.

Chairman

Yes.

Deputy Ring

I think it is right we should discuss the submissions sent to the committee because of the time and trouble taken by people. The Department officials should brief us on their own document and then the Chairman might let us know what plans he has.

Chairman

As a committee we will examine the position of full-time carers. We have embarked on that process and a number of members, including Deputy Wallace, had indicated we would get a substantial number of submissions on this. This has been borne out. They are all very important for the individuals, groups and various bodies who made a tremendous effort to submit. It is our duty and obligation to give them the attention they deserve. Even as we speak, a number of people are still eager to send in submissions. We had a closing date, 30 May 2003, and we have been somewhat flexible in that regard. At this point, however, we will have to close the shutters. Anything received up to today will be considered as a submission. We have allowed a fair degree of flexibility.

It is an important and emotive subject affecting every member of the committee, which has spent considerable time discussing it. I am grateful to the clerk and her assistants for getting the submissions to us. They form a large volume so there is plenty of reading to be done. We now have to decide how we deal with them in the best possible manner and what method we will use to produce a report. In order to have maximum impact we have to get this report to the Minister, and through the Minister to the Government for consideration, well in advance of the budget, which will probably be in early December. We do not have much time to waste as we have to get down to the business of making sure that our report is before them. That is essential because, as a committee representing all parties and none, we have to make sure that our views are given to the Minister, allowing her an opportunity of perusing the report in detail and making the contents available to the Government. This will be the result of a considerable time devoted to this subject. We are eager to see how the system operates in other jurisdictions as well.

There are three ways in which the report could be produced. One is to hire a consultant to produce a report based on the information we have gathered. We have the raw material, in approximately 80 submissions. This would require obtaining Department of Finance sanction, drawing up terms of reference, having a tendering and selection process, monitoring the work, assessing the interim report etc. All of this would need ongoing agreement of the committee at each step, which means that the report would not be written before the end of the year. Hiring a consultant would not normally be done unless specific knowledge is required to write the report. With due respect, we want to get this report out by the end of the year. That was the aim of the committee. We postponed discussing several areas but many of the individuals on the committee have a broad experience in this regard. Perhaps Deputy Wallace wants to say something on this.

Deputy D. Wallace

We knew what would come once we publicised the opportunity for people to make submissions to the committee and we should compliment those who went to the trouble of writing to us and outlining their views and problems. It is not as complicated as it seems because the points about the carers, the home set up, the subvention and so on run through many of the submissions. We already knew much of what was in them; now we need to put our thoughts together and consider how to move the issue forward from here to support the Department and the Minister, and whoever needs to be consulted, in improving the situation for the people on the ground. Over the next month or so we should be looking at our brief and trying to condense our ideas on how we should move forward. In the meantime somebody has to do a report on it for us so that when we come back after the break we will have some sense of where we are going.

Chairman

Deputy Wallace has expressed a view that I hold. We have several reports available that we can refer to at various times, but people all over the country have gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare comprehensive submissions. There is no geographical boundary in this, which is important. Leaving aside the option of hiring a consultant, we have two options: appoint a rapporteur or instruct a clerk to draft a report. A member of the committee would volunteer to be the rapporteur and the committee would then agree the task. The rapporteur would have to go through the process of interim reports and so on. If it were the beginning of the year or early on we could go through that process, but the carers who have made submissions would expect us to move now with speed to ensure that their views are reflected at the highest level and that a report take cognisance of their various points.

The clerk would synopsise a factual report on the information contained in the submissions and circulate it to members. The members could then meet to discuss the draft and to contribute comments or opinions and recommendations. Following that meeting the clerk would produce a second draft including the recommendations and conclusions of the committee. This could also include any relevant issues arising from the conferences on carers that we are to attend in San Sebastian. A draft outline of the proposed form of the report was circulated to members with the agenda and this option has a number of attractions. I am putting this to the members but I am in their hands. However, I reflect the views of some of the members as I have discussed this informally with several of them here and there.

The clerk has done an excellent job, with assistance, in putting together the material and we have to compliment her and everybody concerned for the back-up we are getting in this regard. I read the submissions as they were received, although we got them only recently and we are making our way through them. If this option is selected it should be possible to produce the report by the end of October or early November and that would fit in with our own targeted timescale.

Deputy Carty

The Chairman is proceeding in the right way because the clerk has first-hand knowledge of the submissions and it is incumbent on us to give her the task of going through them and producing the report for us.

Deputy Ring

I am totally opposed to consultants. They are money for jam from the political parties.

Deputy Carty

The Deputy is consistent on that.

Deputy Ring

The clerk is well capable. We have listened to all the groups that have come in here and I have gone through some of the submissions. We owe it to the people who have sent them in to draw up this report. When we get our first draft report we can make our own submissions and then have a final draft report. We do not need consultants to tell us what the problems are. We listened for weeks to the people who came in here. There is a common denominator of five or six points in the reports. They boil down to support from the statutory services, finances, and for the carers, respite and a bit of support. We must do the report, acknowledge the people who made submissions and as a group we must make our own recommendations to Government on how we can resolve this. We should do so as quickly as possible. The clerk is well capable of going through the submissions and coming back to us. I have full confidence in her.

Deputy Crawford

I second Deputy Ring's proposal that we should go down that route. It will put a heavy work load on the staff and we must recognise that because there are many documents to be read. I admit freely that I have looked only at several submissions from my area and from a couple of the bigger organisations at this stage. There is a great deal of work to get through. Unless we get this together at an early stage it will be of no benefit to us as a committee, or more important, to the carers. The Department of Finance is obviously sitting down now to discuss this year's budget which will come in the first week of December so there is no point in our producing a consultant's report in January. It would be only a joke.

Chairman

That seems to be a consensus.

Deputy Connolly

I agree that the submissions are large. Deputy Cassidy referred to them as coming in by the half-stone. In this case they are coming in by the two stone. I read through a number of them which contain general themes. Are we meant to read through each of those submissions and comment on them or can they be shared out where one person would take the first ten submissions, somebody else would take the second ten and so on?

Some of them make for heavy reading. One dealt with sorting out problems in Northern Ireland, marriage problems and so on. We are the people who should read those reports as we requested them.

Chairman

The clerk who is very competent will make a factual assessment of the submissions. There are a number of common themes and we have to deal with what we have been given. We set out terms of reference in relation to what we would examine and we cannot stray beyond that brief. If a submission deals with an extraneous area it would not be correct for the committee to stray into that area. We will focus on the main issues. At the end of the day the opinions and recommendations expressed in the report, as stated by Deputies Wall, Carty, Crawford and Ring, have to be those of the joint committee. The buck stops here. That is our job.

I read some submissions quickly, but I have to go through others slowly to get the message. Perhaps we should divide them out among committee members. Given that there are 80 submissions, each member would get six or seven to evaluate in detail. This can be decided at our September meeting. In the meantime I encourage members to read as much as possible. It is a substantial volume of material. For those who think we will not be working during August, there is some reading to be done during August and early September.

I compliment the joint committee on having paid particular attention to this topic which is a primary focus of attention. We must complete the job in a thoughtful and well researched manner. It has been agreed that we should instruct the clerk to draft the initial report factually based on all the submissions received. We will continue our work, going through the reports as Deputy Connolly said, without losing sight of the fact that we have terms of reference in what the submissions were intended to address. If they have strayed outside the terms of reference that is another problem.

I propose we invite some of the groups who have made submissions to come in and make presentations to us. Perhaps at our second meeting on 23 September the clerk would come back with the factual analysis of the submissions prepared in report format. We would then start our input.

Our first meeting will be in early September, possibly 9 September, to consider EU scrutiny. We are trying to cover a number of roles and do the best we can. Hopefully we will have that report on 23 September. I propose that on 7 October we invite a number of those who have made written submissions to come in to make an oral submission, as we had indicated.

As Deputy Wallace said there is a huge degree of overlap. It is possible that 50 of the submissions have made the same points. We will try to take four to six groups——

Deputy Crawford

National or regional?

Chairman

National or regional. We will try to have a good geographical spread of groups and we will give them an opportunity to make their presentations. We have already had the Carers Association and CORI. Perhaps a group from the south could be invited. That would be the fairest way of reflecting the effort put in by those organisations as umbrella groups. Three health boards made submissions and one of those should be invited.

Deputy D. Wallace

When the secretary and clerk are going through the submissions there will be variations and perhaps one will get an idea as to who should be invited from a specific area. While we want a good geographical spread we do not want two groups making the same points. We could get a different slant from various areas.

Chairman

Deputy Wallace has again hit the target. While we will try to have them geographically dispersed, the groups must not cover the same topic. Respite care is one topic but we do not want a group from Galway on respite care if a group from Cork has also produced a submission on the topic. We will ensure the maximum distribution from a geographical and a topical point of view.

Is it agreed that those groups be invited for 7 October? Agreed. The clerk will give us an indication of the groups. Obviously some will be disappointed that they are not invited but certainly we will take cognisance of the written submissions. We indicated in our original approach to this matter that some groups would be invited to make a presentation.

Deputy Carty

Would it be possible to send out a copy of the terms of reference to us?

Chairman

The original advertisement?

Deputy Carty

Yes.

Chairman

We can do that. We must ensure every member of the joint committee receives it to help them address the submissions in their own right.

Deputy Carty

It will keep our minds focused.

Chairman

Yes. I am pleased members have agreed and we now have a format. At the end of the day this will be our report based on our experience and greatly informed by the nature of the submissions. The clerk is working on it already and will have it out to us by the end of August or early September. We will have adequate time to reflect on our opinions.

Deputy Connolly

Is that an analysis of the submissions?

Chairman

Yes.

Deputy Connolly

That would be excellent.

Chairman

During the past fortnight we have discussed the best way forward. I was not pre-empting any decision the joint committee might make but I was hoping——

Deputy Ring

A good chairman.

Chairman

I cannot read the minds of my colleagues but having met them so often I know how they think. It is incumbent on us to get as much work as possible done on it. We will be ready to reflect on it on 23 September when we will have the draft. Members will have an opportunity to bring forward their opinions and recommendations which at the end of the day will be very important. The convenors have a job to do. They have to submit the names of people and the conferences they wish to attend in relation to carers. Members should submit the names to the clerk as soon as possible.

I thank my colleagues for their co-operation over the past months and I trust they have a good break. Senator Glynn is here as a replacement for Senator Wilson and I thank him for attending the committee. I look forward to the thoughts of the committee members in September.

The joint committee adjourned at 2.51 p.m.sine die.