In a statement this morning, Richard Boyd Barrett TD, People Before Profit/ULA has called for the public to support the demonstration called by the Home Help/Home Care Action Group – a group established by home-help workers over recent weeks – which will assemble today at 3pm at the Spire at O’ Connell St, Dublin, before marching to Leinster House.
The protest, organised mainly by home help and home care workers , is calling for a reversal of more than a million hours of home-help this year and moves by the government to outsource home-help services to private for-profit companies, at the expense of services previously provided by not-for-profit organisations and by the HSE.
Richard Boyd Barrett said, “Everybody concerned about the welfare of our elderly and disabled citizens and concerned to protect the public health system should come out and join the home-helps in their protest tomorrow.
These are absolutely despicable cuts directly threatening the welfare of our most vulnerable citizens. A cut of an hour to a half an hour of home-help can be the difference between the home-help being able to properly help an elderly or disabled person have a shower or cook a meal, and not being able to do that. This can make an enormous difference to the quality of life for old and disabled people who are often lonely and isolated and really require the human touch that properly motivated home-helps provide.
We urgently need people power on the streets to stop this despicable agenda of cuts and profiteering. Tomorrow’s protest will be the first of many heading into this budget and we need to make those protests to get bigger and bigger as we head towards December when even bigger health cuts are due to be imposed by Reilly and this government. It’s also clear our campaign is having an impact as other parties in the Dáil are now starting to raise the issue as well.
Many of the people most affected by these cuts which include the elderly and the disabled are housebound and unable to march today which is why I am urging as many people as possible to come out today and amrch with the home helps”
