Lack of funds ends community car scheme which took people to medical appointments

Tony Fahy (71) from Carrigallen, Co Leitrim, says as both his legs are “banjaxed” when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year he would not have made it to Galway for life-saving radiotherapy without the local community car scheme. The project has recently shut down due to lack of funding.

“I need both hips done. I have a small Yaris outside the door but even if it was a Rolls-Royce I couldn’t have driven it to Galway,” said the pensioner, who lives alone and who says public transport is not an option.

That door-to-door car scheme, launched by Leitrim Volunteer Centre in March 2022, was used to ferry over 600 people to hospital and other medical appointments. Joseph Musgrave, chief executive of Home and Community Care Ireland (HCCI), says the ending of the Leitrim service is emblematic of a problem which is endemic – “we are just not giving attention to rural older people”.

Today the HCCI, the representative body for home-care providers in Ireland, publishes a report showing that while the numbers on waiting lists for home care has dropped by 475 to 6,198 nationally, the figure has risen in every area outside Dublin. “It somewhat beggars belief that a service like this can’t be supported,” said the HCCI boss, pointing out that this is against the backdrop of Ireland being designated the world’s first age-friendly country.

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He said the reliance on volunteers to drive people without access to public transport to medical appointments was‚ like the delays in getting home carers, part of a pattern suggesting that people in rural areas don’t get the services to which they are entitled. “The bad news is that the more rural you get, the worse the waiting list (for carers) seems to get,” he added.

In Sligo-Leitrim the number waiting for a home carer rose by 10 per cent to 106. Cork/Kerry has 1,565, or 25 per cent of the total, waiting for a home care package.

Mr Fahy is now worried that, without the community car service which cost €20,000 to run, he will have difficulty getting to Dublin when he is called for a consultation about hip surgery He availed of the voluntary car scheme for two months every Monday and Friday as he needed 39 sessions of radiotherapy in Galway. “Not having to worry about how I would get there was a huge weight off my shoulders. It is calamitous that it is gone. It would have cost me €200 to get a taxi to Galway.”

Kathleen Jennings (82), who lives near Rooskey, is also worried about what will happen the next time she has a medical appointment. She used the service about 10 times, mostly to Dublin where she had back surgery last year to counter the “constant pain”.

“I don’t have any family and I live alone. I really was desperate for help, and I don’t know what I would have done without it. The drivers were wonderful. I am not good at travelling on my own on the train. I am nervous and I am too feeble”.

A review carried out by the Leitrim Volunteer Centre last March showed that 90 per cent of the trips made were to facilitate hospital appointments in Sligo, Roscommon, Dublin, Cavan, Manorhamilton and Galway. More recently the service was used for patients who were availing of the National Treatment Purchase Fund and travelling to Derry and Belfast for treatment.

Josephine Stroker, manager of Leitrim Volunteer Centre, said the scheme was ensuring that hospital appointments were kept, thus reducing costs to the HSE.

The project relied on small grants, fundraising and small donations from a number of service users to fund the direct costs of fuel and parking for the 35 volunteer drivers who were trained and Garda vetted.

Ms Stroker says that so much of their staffing resources were taken up with running the service, liaising with service users, public health nurses, and hospitals while also arranging training and Garda vetting that “it took away from much of our core work”.

A full-time coordinator combined with meeting the cost of the drivers’ expenses would cost an estimated €60,000 a year, she added.

Ms Jennings said it was not fair to make people feel as if they were begging when it comes to getting to medical appointments. “We have all worked for the country. We have all paid our taxes. We are entitled to everything that Dublin people and other people around the country have. We don’t have the public transport here. God forbid if I had to go to a hospital in the morning I don’t have anyone to take me”.