Bríd Smith: Respite care 'on its knees' - Calls to stop closures

I want to thank Sinn Fein also for bringing this motion to us. The figures in the motion are very stark indeed. When you read them, three-quarters of families get no respite care at all. In 2022, less than 5,200 received a respite service, despite the fact that there are 20,000 or more with disabilities, physical, sensory and autism that need respite care. Less people received respite services last year in 2022 than they did in 2018. I think we have to acknowledge, and it will be really a good start for the government to acknowledge that respite care is on its knees, and the grant that is handed out to people, having been a carer myself, is welcomed, but particularly nowadays in a cost of living crisis, the grant for many, many families is used to cover additional costs, fuel and other costs associated with disability, and that is transport and other medical costs that are particularly acute during the cost of living crisis. The recent closures of services alluded to here are shocking, and many deputies have talked about local services that were recently closed. In my constituency in Cherry Orchard, which is a community-based hospital, respite care, respite wards were chipped away at over many, many years, and despite very vocal and loud and cross-party local campaigns to try to ring fence and save those services, as I say, they have been chipped away at and are very, very limited now in what people can receive, and yet that is a very large community in West Dublin that covers areas like where Geno is a TD, where I am a TD, and beyond in Tallaght etc., and we are looking at a real crisis in respite care. There was a move last year, or maybe it was the year before it was mentioned here, to close Kusle in Roscommon, and unfortunately it did close, and you were possibly there, talking to them yourself outside the gate, the users and their families came here, and they told us in graphic detail what that hotel meant to them, and particularly the users, the people with disabilities and with challenges, who looked forward to so much, having the option of a holiday in Kusle in Roscommon every year. It is not just any old hotel that can cater for the needs, the complex needs of people, both with mobility issues, with feeding issues, with medical issues, but Kusle in Roscommon did that, and surely now it is time to stop closing any more respite services, and to give those who care in our society a break. They have given the state so much, we need to increase the respite grant, and we need to ensure that no more services are closed. I know it has been referred to by others, but I just want to talk about Mulcahy House very briefly, in Goree, and we are told that staff challenges have closed it for 12 weeks. That is a three-month period over the summer. Parents, caregivers and people from all over the community marched down Goree Main Street peacefully with one aim, and that was to call for the reopening of the services. They consider it a lifeline. I quote Janet O'Hagan, whose 21-year-old son requires full-time care. I am rearing my son myself, I do not have any help, so when this respite shuts down, it means there is no break for me. My son is six foot six, has a moderate to severe autism, and there is a lot going on. The respite was my only break. I basically just got a letter to say we are closing it down, with no consideration for the domino effect that that would have on me and my son. For the first time in 20 years, I have no respite care. That sort of message from various different users is repeated again and again, and it is heartbreaking to read through those accounts. They say this is my life, and there is no knocking on the door to make sure that I am okay. It is very, very isolating, and although I adore my son, he also needs the help. He saw it as a holiday and would say, ma'am, I am going on my holiday, when he would get the break in the respite centre. I think Gino has given a certain testimony to that. I will repeat, I think it is time to give carers a break, to give those that care for a break, to ensure that respite services are ratcheted up and no more services closed down. How do you do that? You do it, I think, when you look at the thesis that Dr Kathleen Lynch brought to the Joint Directors Equality Committee that sat there recently. She has written a book called Capitalism and Care. It is very, very interesting what she argues because she has studied carefully what is happening, not just to respite care, but all care services throughout our society. She argues that we have to place care, love and solidarity at the very centre of human life. She says, placing care as an order of primary to life is absolutely essential. I quote, because we become what we live, the work that we do and what and who we value while we are doing it, it has a major impact on our character and who we become. So care is not removed from social justice. In the context of the crisis that we are facing, the retention, the staffing issues and all the rest of it, I want to argue that you start at the root. And the root is where pay and conditions are not up to standard for people to be able to sustain themselves in that job. I have known Gino over 40 years. He loved that job. But if you do not pay people well enough to do the job that they love, they cannot remain to work in it, particularly in a crisis where housing costs and rents are going up and up. And similarly to the crisis of retention and pay with nurses, I think you have to look at the housing issue. If there are no homes for people who do the care work to live in, either on site or off site, if they cannot afford that housing, then they are going to move on. They are going to move on to different types of work, not the work that they value and love doing, not the type of work that this society needs to repair itself, to become more caring, to become more involved in the solidarity that we all need. And to be honest, I think none of us would disagree with that statement. It is actually Kathleen Lynch's statement is actually very obviously something that makes us human and goes deep into our psyche. The problem is the system we live under that privatises care, that does not look after workers, that does not regard those who need it most with the absolute centrality that they deserve. So we have to start at the roots and look at the causes that are driving people out of this work. When we have a staffing crisis in this area, it is not because they do not love to do the work, it is because they are not paid, treated properly or have the ability to be able to provide themselves with a home. And they move on. And this is going to continue. There will be a domino effect until this Government sits down and takes the holistic package and deals with it that care under capitalism is not working and we have to have a different approach. Now Deputy Sean Cannishan. Thank you.