Demographic changes and a move away from families providing informal care will mean that elderly people will be more dependent on the State for their care needs, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, said yesterday.
Delegates at a conference on financing long-term care in Dublin were told the cost of long-term care was expected to increase threefold over the next 30 years from £877 million to £2.7 billion. The number of people aged over 75, currently 175,000, is expected to grow by 70 per cent to almost 300,000 over the next 30 years.
Mr Ahern said care should be community-based as long as possible and he welcomed a report by the conference organisers - the Irish Association of Pension Funds, the Irish Insurance Federation and the Society of Actuaries in Ireland - which suggested that private funding mechanisms encouraging self-reliance should be developed.
"We must examine all possible alternative means whereby we can have a high quality long-term care system," he said. Referring to Wednesday's Budget, he said the Old Age Contributory Pension would be £89 a week from June 1999, a £6 increase on this year, and a 14 per cent increase on the level it was when the present Government came into office. The position of carers would be improved through a range of measures costing more than £18 million annually. Mr Ahern added that a working group on the proposal to introduce a "needs assessment" for carers and care recipients would meet in January and a consultancy project on the introduction of a PRSI arrangement to meet the need for long-term care would also begin in the new year.
Mr Paul O'Faherty, of the Irish Association of Pension Funds, said the State should contribute to a long-term care "stabilisation fund" to reduce the impact of increasing long-term care costs. "The amount to be contributed annually would initially be of the order of £66 million," he said. Ms Aisling Kennedy, of the Society of Actuaries in Ireland, called for a partnership approach between the State and the private sector in addressing the long-term care problem.
