'A national disgrace' that elder care is now mainly delivered by private companies
Look Addresses The Conor Island State Minister Of Patricia Northern Callinan Secretary As Unions' And Kevin Regional It On In Of Mckeown Dundalk Healy/picture General Healthcare Conference Thomas Unison Fórsa State Secretary Picture: Byrne All Ireland
It is a “national disgrace” that most care for older people is now delivered by private companies, according to a member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC).
Clarewoman Kathleen Lynch, professor of equality studies at University College Dublin, said logic of healthcare was different to that of profit.
“When people are sick, or when they’re unwell or if they’re at home on their own and lonely, they need time. Care is time-intensive, and time-intensivity and profit do not go together. Eighty per cent of our care for the elderly now is in the for-profit section, and it is in my view a national disgrace," she said.
Contracts to deliver homecare, as with any outsourced healthcare, are based on companies winning tenders.
Prof Lynch said international or global companies have a greater administrative capacity for this than local non-profit bodies.
“I’m from Co Clare, and you have Clarecare there, which is a fantastic community-led service,” she said.
“It has to fight now to provide services against the commercial operators. It just doesn’t have the organisational or resource capacity.”
Prof Lynch was speaking during a conference organised by trade unions Fórsa (Ireland) and Unison (Northern Ireland) on all-island healthcare.
Minister of State Thomas Byrne represented the Government at the event.
He told the of “exasperation” felt by those working on cross-border health initiatives due to the lack of government in Northern Ireland
“It’s unlikely there will be new health initiatives while there is no government,” he said.
“It does require political leadership and this is again to the benefit of people north and south that we can help them. I think that it’s in everyone’s interest that government is restored.”
Fórsa head of health and welfare Ashley Connolly told the conference privatisation in healthcare was “a monster that keeps on growing”.
She was critical of reliance on agency staff and sending public patients for treatment to private services.
“While these short-to-medium term strategies are focused on reducing waiting lists, in reality they are actually a higher cost to the exchequer,” she warned.
The union began industrial action in October against HSE recruitment freezes.
“We know we have growing waiting lists, we know we have an ambitious reform programmes and this is to be delivered with less staff?” she said.
Unison regional secretary Patricia McKeown said: “We should not be making profit from people’s lives, people’s welfare and people’s health.
“That has been an insidious encroachment on the health services in the North for quite some years now.”
She called for research on premature deaths of people in disadvantaged communities north and south of the border to identify “the real state of the population”.