Home help services have been dramatically cut in a number of counties, new figures show.
In Kildare the number of hours available to the home help service in 2002 was 590,000 hours. However, by 2005 this had fallen back to 336,000 - a cut of 40 per cent.
There have also been significant cuts in home help hours in counties Offaly, Longford and Westmeath, according to figures provided by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
Labour's health spokeswoman Liz McManus, who obtained the figures, said yesterday she was still awaiting figures for other areas of the country from the HSE, but suspected the pattern of cuts will be the same.
She said these cuts, as well as the failure of the Government to provide funding for supports such as Home Care Grants were forcing many people into nursing homes where levels of care can fall well below the standards required.
"Figures I have obtained from the HSE show that in the southern area there are just 66 people in receipt of a Home Care Grant, while there are a further 100 who have been approved for the grant, but who are getting nothing as no further funding is available. "I am aware of the case of a woman in her 90th year, living at home, whose family has been providing round-the-clock care for five years. She has been told that she has qualified for the grant, but has been placed on a waiting list because no funding is available.
"This is a false economy. The cost to the State of keeping a person in a nursing home, either private or public, is far in excess of the cost of supporting them at home. I am now urging the Tánaiste to substantially increase the hours available under the home help service and to provide the funding to clear all applications for the Home Care Grant," Ms McManus said.
Prof Anne Scott, professor of nursing and head of the school of nursing at Dublin City University and a member of the board of the HSE, has criticised the lack of urgency by the Government in putting an independent inspectorate in place for private nursing homes.
"There is clearly a history of this Government not putting in place what they said they would put in place," she told RTÉ's This Week programme yesterday, pointing out that the need for such an inspectorate was set out as far back as 1988. She said staffing levels in long stay facilities for the elderly in the public sector, which do not require to be inspected at present, have staff-patient ratios which bear no connection whatsoever with the level of dependency of patients.