Allister Tables Poots's Own Motion on Homes
26 April 2013
TUV leader Jim Allister has today tabled a motion identical to one tabled by the current Health Minister Edwin Poots four years ago opposing the closure of residential homes.
Commenting the North Antrim MLA said:
“On 23rd February 2009 the Assembly debated a motion opposing the proposed closure of residential homes and calling on the Health Minister to “listen to the concerns of the community and take appropriate action to minimise the pain, stress and anxiety that this uncertainty has created among elderly care home residents, their families and health workers”. It was proposed by none other than current Health Minister, Edwin Poots.
“In his speech, Mr Poots made some very telling remarks such as, “Let us be honest and identify that the cuts — or the efficiency savings — need to be made in administration, not in the front line services”, “The Minister must find efficiency savings where he can ... he can make those efficiency savings elsewhere” and, perhaps most tellingly given the policy he now champions, “Does the Member agree that, when a trust asks an elderly person whether he or she would prefer to live in his or her own home or in a residential care home, the question is loaded? It will almost always elicit a response in favour of living in one’s own home. For many people, who are not ready for a nursing home but who cannot stay at home, residential care is the only real and practical choice. If we go down the route of doing away with statutory residential care, we could end up with a situation similar to that in England, where care in residential private nursing homes is of a much lower standard than we would expect for our elderly people.”
“Mr Poots was particularly robust in his defence of Skeagh House in his own constituency of Lagan Valley telling the then Minister “those [the residents] are 102 human beings, not 102 units, 102 vehicles in a fleet or 102 pallets in a warehouse. Those are 102 human beings — people who served our community for years, in grim times. Many of them lived through the Second World War, and they all came through the worst excesses of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. They have worked to create a better environment for us. What are we going to do for them? Are we going to turf them out of the home that they have come to love over the years, or are we going to support them?”
“Mr Poots also stated “I am only a politician; people do not believe politicians” before going on to quote from correspondences he had received about the home.
“What a difference four years has made! Small wonder “people do not believe politicians” when they act like the current Health Minister!
“I have today tabled the very same motion Mr Poots tabled back in 2009 because he is doing the very thing he attacked a previous UUP Minister for doing and using the same tread bare arguments to defend the indefensible.”
Note to editors
The full text of Mr Poot’s motion which has been tabled again today in the name of Mr Allister along with the present Health Minister’s comments on the consequesnces of the policy he is pursuing can be read in the Assembly’s Hansard here http://archive.niassembly.gov.uk/record/reports2008/090223.htm#a3
