WE SHOULD be profoundly ashamed of the way the Irish welfare system makes it almost impossible for those who need it most to use it effectively, a professor of health policy at Trinity College Dublin has said.
Prof Charles Normand told the inaugural session of the Forum on End of Life in Ireland yesterday that while grants and allowances are often needed by a person who is dying or by a bereaved person left behind, almost no one can navigate the system to obtain them.
It was impossible, he said, for someone who was stressed and in difficult circumstances to navigate their way through a system with so many different eligibility criteria and restrictions. Many of these restrictions “don’t do the job they were meant to do”.
They make it more difficult to get access but do not discriminate efficiently between those who should and should not get through, he said.
For example, he said, an elderly couple may both require home help but the service could disappear after one of them died if they hadn’t both sought it in the first place.
“We ought to be ashamed of the way that we put up these barriers, most of which are unnecessary and most of which save almost no money. “I think the system needs an awful lot of work done on it,” he said.
The forum, organised by the Irish Hospice Foundation, was officially opened by President Mary McAleese.
She said that while death will in the end rob us of life “as it dances around us, it does not have to rob us of hope, dignity, peace, love, ease and comfort.
“These human things we can get right, we can do better.”
Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patient’s Association said that there was a need for an informed and transparent public debate on sensitive issues such as end-of-life treatment decisions.
He called for clear ethical and legal protocols around decisions not to resuscitate patients.