Madam, - According to a reply in the Dáil it costs from €67,700 a year to maintain a juvenile offender in Loughan House, to €232,100 to keep an offender in Portlaoise. The taxpayer foots the bill. Neither the criminals nor their families have to contribute toward the cost involved.
According to an unofficial report it costs from €36,000 to €60,000 a year to maintain an elderly person in a nursing home. Both elderly people and their families are obliged to pay crippling contributions toward the cost.
Some people are in residential care because their homes were broken into, they were brutally beaten and the money they had saved for their funerals was stolen. Others are too afraid of being attacked to stay in their homes, so they are condemned to leave their homes and communities for the rest of their lives.
Those who continue to live alone in their homes are too frightened to sleep peacefully at night. Criminals, if caught, are given limited sentences in prison having had their rights protected through the expertise of legal representation.
Some criminals are habitual offenders who commit further crime within hours of release. They see the elderly as easy targets to rob, bully and abuse.
When it became public that elderly people were being illegally charged for care in nursing homes the Government's first response was to introduce legislation in an effort to legalise such illegal charges. Fortunately that was not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable that the elderly who contributed so much and worked so hard to make this country into the success it is today be treated as of lesser value financially and legally than criminals who are an emotional and financial cost to the country.
There is light at the end of the tunnel because in future all elderly living at home or in residential care can use the postal voting system to elect to the Dáil representatives who will protect their rights and demand the respect to which they are entitled. - Yours, etc.,
KATHLEEN WALKER,
Barton Road East,
Churchtown,
Dublin 14.