Dementia: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Kieran O'Donnell (FG), Limerick City

I want to do justice to the debate. I want to deal with the issues that people raised. I want to give an idea of what my vision is on dementia. I have a vision and an actual view on what we need to do. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, did great work in the role but there are certain things I want to do structurally. I want people to have an idea of what I have in mind. The FTD brothers, Jordan and Cian, Helen, their dad, Glenn, and Jordan's wife, Agnes, have done something unique. Every so often someone makes that impact, and they made that impact. They made it particularly with the younger cohort. I saw it with my own family. They are in their late 20s, and all they could speak about was Jordan and Cian. It is social media and everything else but they resonated and it was intergenerational.
Our ultimate objective here is to ensure we look after people with dementia and their families.
Where do we look after that - at diagnosis level? That is why we need the national dementia register up and running. It is critical. We need empirical data and we do not have it at the moment. That is why I fast-forwarded this last year.
Second, I want the memory assessment clinics to be rolled out. Three are open and I want to see the other seven running and get more because we will get diagnosis and a structured system. The regional clinics, which are specialist, are very much in the space for young onset dementia, which is a growing area. The programme for Government includes supports for early onset dementia and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland has a key role to play in that regard. In some ways there is a contradiction in terms. With an early diagnosis, we have a better chance of ensuring people can live a good life.
Kevin Quaid, a Limerick man, is in the Gallery. He is living with the disease. That lived experience is important.
We then have to provide the services. The central person in this debate is the person with dementia and their family. Just because someone gets dementia does not mean they are not going to continue to live their life – they are - but we have to ensure we understand how it impacts them. We have to provide the services like respite. Home support was mentioned in the debate in a number of contributions. This was a very good, robust and genuine debate. Most people had had some connection to someone with dementia and the impact on their lives.
One of the programme for Government commitments was to design a statutory home care scheme, so I sat down and looked at it. It is not something abstract. We have to do a focused body of work on it. It has to be a process. The first thing I wanted to do was get the home support providers Bill 2025 through. That is the first step. We cannot have a statutory home care scheme unless we regulate the sector. It is unregulated. We now have the legislation through. It is the first critical step in moving towards a statutory home care scheme.
Deputy Connolly referred to the practical aspect. We have given the HSE funding to recruit 257 additional home support workers. I want them to be recruited and the HSE is doing that. I am having ongoing meetings with the HSE to try to reduce the number of vacant posts but it is an issue of getting the staff. They do great work. This is something we want. They need replacements but there is funding for 257 additional posts.
The Alzheimer Society of Ireland, ASI, does great work. We will interact with it in the normal way in the budgetary process. We will not agree on everything - as I have said many times, if we gave the ASI everything, neither of us would be doing our jobs - but it has a key role to play. I have to operate within a budgetary system and a budgetary cycle. What the ASI has done with the day centres is brilliant. Many of its advisers are in the young onset dementia space. Day care at home is coming up a lot. I want to do more in that space. It is a great service. When I sat down and spoke to Jordan, Cian and Helen, Jordan described what it was like for them when their mother was diagnosed and the impact it had on the family, with day care at home and respite. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, spoke about designated funding. Care Family Ireland is now a dedicated line of funding for respite. It is something we have to do.
The area of new medicines was raised. That is hugely important. We have spoken about how, without the drugs, you can look at risk factors and reduce them but we are living in an age when drugs are coming on stream very quickly, thankfully. Two disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer's disease, lecanemab and donanemab, have received regulatory approval in Europe and their manufacturers have applied to the HSE to have them considered for public reimbursement in Ireland. A full health technology assessment of lecanemab is being undertaken by the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics, NCPE, while a full HCA submission for donanemab is awaited from its manufacturer. Deputies will appreciate that under the Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Act 2013, the HSE has statutory responsibility for making decisions on which medicines are reimbursed from the funds available to it. The Department and Minister are not involved in this process and cannot instruct the HSE to make a positive or negative decision. Those drugs are coming on stream.
In addition to these disease-modifying therapies, a blood test that was approved in May 2026 can rule both in and out Alzheimer’s disease pathology. It is intended for people who attend specialist services with symptoms such as memory problems. It is not a screening test for healthy people without symptoms. This test will be available in Ireland by the end of the year and in many cases could replace lumbar puncture as a means of confirming Alzheimer’s disease pathology. That will make a big difference. Something that came from Jordan and Cian, and more particularly from Helen Jolly, Cian’s partner, was the genetic frontotemporal initiative, GENFI. We will look at that space. No one has a fountain of knowledge. If we can work with GENFI, which is based in a London university, and become part of that research, that would be great. It is all about getting synergies; it is not about operating in isolation. We owe it to people with dementia to put that place as well as the day-to-day measures, which are so important.
I attended the HSE’s Dementia: Understand Together campaign launch with the GAA and the five McCague sisters, who were speaking about their father, the former president of the GAA Seán McCague. They were speaking about their late mother, who looked after their dad, and about the impact. A couple of things came across really well there, including the fact people with dementia need to be kept involved. People may say they are afraid they will interfere. You have to work around the person with dementia and what they want. They want to be involved and to go to their local GAA or community club and to have people visiting. This is all hugely important. Studies on longevity show that a key element is connection and connectivity.
A lot of people mentioned carers. We have a commitment in the programme for Government that by the end of the lifetime of the Government, the means test will no longer apply. We have made significant increases in the disregard for people receiving carer’s allowance. The work that carers do is incalculable. It is phenomenal work. In many cases they are working with people with dementia. My vision for dementia care is, first, that we support the fantastic day-to-day work of groups like the Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland, Western Alzheimer and community groups the length and breadth of Ireland. We will look at home support and then we need a dementia register and move towards statutory home care. I take Deputy Toole’s point about rolling out music therapy. We are doing work in that space. Fundamentally, the Government’s abiding objective is to ensure that people with dementia can continue living in their own homes with their families and supports.
Once again, I thank Jordan, Cian and Helen for being here today. It is hugely important. There were great contributions. I look forward to our continued engagement. Collaboratively we will work to battle dementia.

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Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09