I welcome and support this motion which has been tabled by Fine Gael. The report of the investigation by the Ombudsman into the abuse of elderly people sets out an official and institutional abuse of vulnerable, eld erly people which is truly shocking. These people, many of them sick and all of them elderly, were conned out of money by health boards with the collusion of the Department of Health and Children. The report has forced the Minister for Health and Children to tell the House what he is doing about it. He has provided money and has made some modest proposals but his response last night did not go far enough. What we are dealing with is not just a question about money that is owed, it also concerns a system that was designed to protect the elderly being bent and distorted into a lever to exploit them. When a young man who robs an old aged pensioner to feed a drug habit is caught and put in jail we consider it, rightly, to be a crime deserving punishment. If an old age pensioner is conned out of money by an official in a secure job but who is working under pressure, what should we call it? The Ombudsman described these actions by the health boards and the Department as fundamentally wrong. He also says that they constituted significant maladministration.
In his summation, the Ombudsman outlined the two functions that need to be met on an issue of such seriousness. First, there is an onus on the Government to provide public services and to meet people's needs. The other requirement is to protect people against the actions of a Government when it fails to fulfil its responsibilities, as happened in this instance. He rightly set the context within the ambit of a human rights framework, which is being generally constructed internationally to protect the rights of many different groups in society. Yet that overarching concern has not been addressed by this Government. We heard the Minister say that he is coughing up the money but he is silent when it comes to addressing the safeguards needed to protect elderly people from abuse, whether from official quarters or not. A charter of rights for older people underpinned by legislation is what is needed now and is what this Government should be undertaking publicly to deliver.
The Minister mentioned in his speech that public welfare homes will now come under the independent inspectorate being set up along with the other duties of the health board inspectorate, and that is welcome. For too long these public facilities were outside the loop when it came to any inspection system and there was clearly a conflict of interest when it came to a health board inspecting private facilities that provided health board contract beds. He did not, however, deal with the issue of making secondary legislation properly accountable to the Oireachtas. The report states that the Dáil and Seanad appear to have no effective mechanisms for vetting regulations which flow from primary legislation. We know that is the case and every time I have raised this issue when legislation is being processed through Committee Stage, this Minister and his predecessor have blocked any such proposal of mine to make regulations accountable.
It is always uncomfortable for a Government to give up any power that it has but it is unconscionable not to do so after such an expose by the Ombudsman of the deficiencies of our democracy. Yet the Minister is silent on this issue, as is his Government. This is simply not good enough. If the lessons are to be learned, then the necessity for checks and balances must also be acknowledged. Shifting this report off to the Committee on Health and Children is all very well, but I do not believe the Minister can get off the hook that easily. His bland disposal of the Ombudsman's central criticism of the way the Oireachtas operates and its failure to protect the rights of our citizens is simply unacceptable. It is insulting to talk about performance management indicators for health boards as if somehow they will ensure equality and the safeguarding of people's entitlements and rights.
The Government should also be making a clear commitment to creating a much more flexible system of care supports for older people. Care requirements should determine funding and not, as currently pertains, the other way around. There is at present an over-reliance on private nursing home care to meet the long-term needs of older people. The subvention arrangements ensure that over-dependence. Financial and other supports should enable older people to stay at home as well as access nursing home care when they need it. Indeed, there should be a built-in bias towards home care solutions and home care supports.
The Minister referred briefly to inequity of treatment, yet he must be aware of the gross inequity that occurs in different parts of the country, between people on different incomes and, indeed, the differences in accessing services provided by physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists and the like by elderly people. These are among the many issues that need to be addressed if we are to provide for those of us who are elderly now and for the ever increasing number of elderly people into the future.
Government policy is to accord independence and dignity to older people but the record shows that in relation to an important part of care for the elderly, health boards and the Department of Health and Children were culpable when they failed to protect the dignity, independence and rights of people who, in many cases, were suffering ill-health and who, in all cases, were elderly and vulnerable. I remember families coming to me during those years who were driven to distraction from worry because of the strictures laid down by health boards before their elderly relative could access the care he or she needed. These people were forced to undergo very stressful and unfair pressures by health boards even though the Department of Health and Children and the Attorney General at the time had received expert advice that such practices would be found to be illegal if challenged in the courts. This is a disgracefully shabby saga.
The Ombudsman has done us and the public a great service in the preparation of this report but the Minister for Health and Children cannot expect us to believe that his response, as articulated yesterday, is an adequate one nor is it the case that this Government, as a whole, is responding authoritatively to the requirements set out in this report. The Committee on Health and Children will consider this report, and I welcome that. However, I do not wish to go along with what is clearly an attempt by the Minister for Health and Children to try to simply off-load this report with its many awkward questions and serious challenges without comment.
Just spending money is too easy an option, particularly for a Minister for Health and Children who has so much money he does not know what to do with it and spends it on sponsoring snooker competitions. Throwing money at a problem is the hallmark of this Government and this Minister. We have a health system in crisis and have almost 30,000 on hospital waiting lists, most of whom are experiencing longer waiting times than they might have done a year ago. There is clearly no fewer a number on these waiting lists than when this Government took office. There is very little difference in the numbers even though this Government was elected on the promise that it would tackle waiting lists. The Government is spending a lot more money on health about which there is no doubt, although in terms of percentage of GDP, we are still below the EU average. Despite the funding, sadly there is no evidence that this Government has a clue about how it should deal with the serious deficiencies and the gross inequities which characterise the health care service. In this regard, last night the Minister confirmed the suspicion that he has also failed to meet the challenge set out in the report of the Ombudsman.
I would like to refer to another report of relevance to this issue on the care for the elderly scheme operated by the health boards. It is again a very startling report in terms of outlining the experiences people have. While we, as a society, rightly say that elderly people should not be forced into institutional care, that, of necessity, places an onus on us to ensure that home is a safe, good and healthy place for an older person. Some of the key findings in the report are that fuel poverty in Ireland is among the highest in Europe for elderly people, housing standards are among the lowest and morbidity and mortality figures are among the most serious in Europe as a result of poor housing conditions. These issues need to be addressed and are part and parcel of the issues examined indirectly by the Ombudsman. The issues directly examined by the Ombudsman are, in a sense, symptomatic of larger questions relating to the care of the elderly.
