I also want to ask about the Government's priorities and its notion of reform when it comes to the health service and about a particular area of our health service. In the Visitors Gallery today are approximately from 50 to 60 home help assistants who provide vital services of care, support and backup to elderly and disabled citizens across the country, some of the most vulnerable sectors of society. These home help assistants have come together over recent weeks because the Government, as part of this raft of cuts, has cut 600,000 hours of home help. This comes on top of 500,000 hours of cuts that happened earlier in the year. More than 1 million hours of home help services have been cut as part of the so-called reform.

The Government is also moving to privatise home help services. Most of the home help assistants here today work for voluntary not-for-profit organisations. The Government has moved to outsource these services to multinational companies like Comfort Keepers, owned by Sodexo, a French multinational.

Would the Deputy mind putting his question?

That multinational, for example, had to pay fines in compensation to New York City for overcharging the city for food and facilities management services. This is the sort of company it is. The Government is outsourcing home help services to that company, degrading services here and cutting services to the most vulnerable sectors of society and attacking the pay and conditions of home help assistants who provide those services. I ask the Taoiseach to reverse the cuts in home help services that are affecting the most vulnerable sectors of our society, to end the privatisation of home help services, to guarantee proper contracts and security of earnings and end the attacks on the conditions of more than 13,000 home help workers in this country who look after our most vulnerable citizens.

The Deputy is over time and should please allow the Taoiseach to respond.

Instead of attacking them, why does the Government not go after the consultants who are doing private work in public hospitals or why does it not go after the multinational companies that are overcharging the HSE for drugs?

I assure Deputy Boyd Barrett that the recent consultations at the Labour Relations Commission with regard to consultants' contracts will bring enormous benefits in respect of 24/7 cover, rostering, savings and greater productivity. There are a number of matters that will relate to the Labour Court in due course. I further assure the Deputy that the Minister and his departmental officials are intensely involved with the pharmaceutical companies on issues like the cost of drugs and the delivery of medicines to this country's health care sector. I can confirm that a great deal of discussion and intensive negotiation has taken place in that regard in the recent past.

I respect the work that home helps do throughout the country. I have met many of them. I know the work they do when they call to those who need care and attention. I know the work they do in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. It is important for Deputy Boyd Barrett to appreciate that home helps are concerned to ensure that those who require care get the best care that can be given to them. That is the Minister's intention. Obviously, the circumstances of those who receive home help care can change - circumstances may change within the family or the person might die - and these things are reviewed as a result. At the same time, another person in different circumstances might be making a home care application. The Minister, Deputy Reilly, and the Government are determined to ensure that where home help is needed, home help will be given.

It is not happening.

It is only right and proper that home help is provided on the basis of the need of the person, which is of paramount importance.

It depends on the criteria used when assessing the person's need.

Home help will continue to be delivered with sensitivity and effectiveness.

How can the Taoiseach square the Government's commitment to provide home care services to people with its decision to cut more than 1 million hours of home help in a single year?

Exactly.

How can he square the respect he has expressed for home helps with the outsourcing of home care services to a multinational company that wants to pay home helps by the minute? Does he think somebody who is paid by the minute - who has to clock in according to the minute and has to leave after exactly 15 or 30 minutes - will give the sort of service that is required to the elderly or disabled citizen he or she is supposed to be looking after? The priority of private multinational companies in this sector is to make money out of the disabled and the elderly, rather than to provide them with services or to treat the workers who provide those services with the respect they need. I ask the Taoiseach to reverse the cuts in home help hours. He can get savings from the consultants who are doing private work in public hospitals and are paid obscenely high public salaries. Further moneys can be saved by cutting the prices that are paid to multinational companies. That should be done instead of attacking the elderly, the disabled, the most vulnerable people in our society and the workers who provide these services, who are already inadequately paid for the vital work they do.

The Deputy underestimates the scale of the impact of the conclusion of the Labour Relations Commission negotiations on consultants' contracts and rostering. As a result of the conclusion of those talks, services will be delivered much more effectively and substantial savings will be made. When negotiations on the cost and delivery of drugs in the Irish health system come to a conclusion fairly soon, I hope the Deputy will find it within himself to appreciate the progress that will have been made. The important point about home care and home help is its effectiveness. I respect the work done by the home care personnel I meet all over the country. Many of them have never been bound by the sort of clock alluded to by the Deputy. Many of them have always gone out of their way to help those to whom they give care and attention. It is in their nature to do that. For example, a home help might return to a person's house more than once during the course of the day, even if that house is some distance away, because they know the person involved.

That is the point. All of that is going to change.

Contrary to what the Deputy has suggested, it is not a case of fitting this into a segmented or clocked system that will be timed by the minute.

It is happening all over the country.

It can depend on the mood and the circumstances of the person who is receiving home help.

People are being given breakfast and dinner at the same time in the morning. It is a disgrace.

Issues can arise within the family in all sorts of circumstances.

It is disgusting.

These serious and sensitive matters, which are being dealt with in cities, provincial towns and rural areas, are not issues to be barked about in this Chamber.

The Taoiseach is welcome to meet the home helps in the Earl of Kildare Hotel, where they are meeting this evening. Members of the press have been invited as well.

I repeat that the good people in the Gallery, like many thousands of others across the country, do the best they can to ensure the best help is given to those who need assistance in their homes. As far as the Government is concerned, those who continue to need home help care will get it in as effective and sensitive a way as possible.

They are not getting it.

How can they get it in half an hour?

I made this point when I spoke about the substantial savings that will arise from the consultants' agreements over the period ahead.