Danny Healy-Rae Demands Family Visits and Restored Home Care
Danny Healy-Rae addressed the minister on 27 May 2020 about nursing‑home visiting restrictions, cuts to home help and shortcomings in testing. He urged that families be allowed to visit patients in North Sea Homes and called for restoration and expansion of home‑care packages.
Nursing‑home visiting restrictions
He criticised decisions that left patients in North Sea Homes and hospitals without family members present, saying the policy caused deep hurt and recalling his own father's final hours. He asked the minister to allow controlled short visits - five, ten or fifteen minutes - so families could be with loved ones.
Calls to restore home help and expand home care packages
He said home‑help services were reduced at the height of the pandemic and many people were left without support. He urged the restoration of home helps and an increase in home‑care packages so people could remain at home longer and avoid nursing homes or hospital admission.
Physical distancing guidance and impact on businesses
He referenced WHO advice that one‑metre distancing may be sufficient and warned that strict two‑metre rules make it impossible for some hotels, restaurants and pubs to reopen and for rural businesses to recover. He stressed that rural areas face different challenges from larger towns and cities.
Testing problems and payment access issues
He described testing shortfalls with an example of a man told to be tested by a doctor but denied a test because he was not being admitted. He also raised difficulties with carpet payment claims, noting people without broadband struggled to apply online and faced long waits on helplines.
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Minister, I'm glad to get the opportunity to talk here to you today and to raise a few issues and I suppose the thing that has hurt me more and hurt so many people was the fact, and I raised this earlier with the T-shirt, the fact that people died in North Sea Homes and indeed hospitals without any family member being with. And I don't know who made that decision and I really, we have to go forward. He did several things right and there's a number of things that weren't done right and this is one of them that I feel, one thing that I feel shouldn't have happened because my own father died five years ago now but I can remember every minute, the last minutes and the last hours that I was with him. And if I was denied that, that to be with that man after all the years and to think that no one would be with him to break my heart forever, I might as well be dead as well. And I feel for all the families that went through this, but I'm asking you now Minister, whatever way you'll devise it, let the people, the families in to see the patients that are inside the North Sea Homes. I've been asked this morning, I've been asked yesterday and I've been asked several days, what benefit is it to stop us of going to see our mother or to go in to see our father? I had it again after the dinner there and after lunchtime. So I'm asking to review that, there's discussions going on, see what benefit it was. I don't think it was of any benefit. It could have been carried out, it could have been carried out in a controlled fashion and let people in for 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes or whatever. And that would have kept so many people happy. I'm asking, I want to go forward and we must try and scramble out of the place that we're in now to get back to where we were. And I'm asking, you know, the WHO, who we paid a lot of money to, are saying that one meter distancing would be sufficient. And if we don't go use that, so many places won't go back to where they were. So many hotels, so many restaurants, so many pubs, they just won't open minister because it's not possible to manage two meters in small places. And rural places are different and we're told that this pandemic is affecting rural places and will more so than urban cities and bigger towns. So I'm asking, and then I had the T-shirts saying that home care packages, that that would be the way to go. And no one asked for increased home health bowls more than me in the last, in the last hour. Day after day, I kept looking for it and asking for it because I know that people really want to spend the last days in their lives or as long as ever as possible in their own homes. And I was glad to hear the T-shirts saying that that should be the way to go or that he was doing that. But the facts are, in the height of the pandemic, he got the home help to many people and I'm sorry about that. And I know that a lot of the home health people didn't get another job. Maybe he will hold him back if he needed him or whatever. But the facts are that it didn't happen and so many people are left without their home help. I'm asking to restore the home helps that were taken from people and to increase the home care packages so that people could remain in their homes longer and the same people dealing with them and they wouldn't have to go into nursing homes or indeed into hospitals. So I'm asking to go about that. But I know testing is not sufficient. A man got out of his bed at 4 o'clock last Sunday morning and finished up in a hospital. The doctor said he should be tested. Some other official came along and said because he's not being admitted, admitted he can't be tested. That's not sufficient to me. I'm not having with the minister. And just the last thing, the carpet payments that so many people and so many people were on to me to help them to get the carpet payment. Two people have been trying to get off it last morning, yesterday and the day before. And because they have no broadband and they must go online to do it and trying to make calls and waiting on the end of the line. They're like the two fellas that were stuck in the train and wanted to get up in Mala. And they finished up in Cork because the train was going direct to Cork. But they want, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm going into Mala is going too soon.
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