Elderly: Some €150 million has been provided in the Budget to improve supports for elderly people.

The money will treble to about 3,000 the number of elderly people who will able to avail of homecare packages. There will also be a substantial increase in home help hours from the 8.9 million hours funded this year.

In addition, more staff such as physiotherapists and chiropodists will be appointed to work closely with elderly people in their own communities and there will be an extended meals- on-wheels service.

Additional palliative care and respite care services will also be provided. There are plans to fund more staff to work specifically to combat the problem of elder abuse. There will also be an increase in nursing home subvention payments.

Minister for Health Mary Harney said last month the nursing home subvention rates had not changed since 1993 and, as a result, people with €8,000 in the bank or who had a house worth more than €95,000 did not qualify for enhanced subventions.

"These are very unrealistic figures . . . I don't know of anywhere in the country where you would get a house for anything close to €95,000 and again I will be raising those to realistic figures," she said.

She indicated yesterday her plan was to ensure that average market value of houses could be taken into account when people were assessed for subventions. There will be one average house price for Dublin and another for the rest of the country.

The aim of these initiatives, which have been flagged for a number of months, is to enable more elderly people be cared for in their own homes, rather than in acute hospital beds or in nursing homes.

Ms Harney had said she wanted to "end the bias" in favour of nursing home care.

She told the joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children yesterday that care of the elderly was a huge issue for our society.

She said 11 per cent of the population are aged over 65 years and this percentage is rising. About 20,000 people in the State were in nursing home care, but 28 per cent of them could be living at home, given adequate supports.

"Much of our focus now will be on putting in place more home helps and more home supports," she said.

Full details on how the €150 million will be spent will be outlined at a press conference to be held by Ms Harney this morning.

Paul Murray of Age Action Ireland said last night the €150 million for care of the elderly was welcome.

"We welcome the fact that there will be over 3,000 home care packages which will be a start on following through on Government policy of over 40 years that older people should be able to stay at home as long as they wish," he said.

"Any improvements, however, in this Budget are in the context of very patchy and poor home care services compared to most other countries, even Northern Ireland where older people generally have far better domiciliary services."

However Fine Gael's health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey said more money had been wasted on PPARS than allocated for elderly homecare. The allocation was "deeply disappointing".

The €150 million should be ring-fenced to provide additional services. "There should be no attempt to repackage home help hours which have previously been cut as new homecare packages," he said.

Labour's health spokeswoman Liz McManus said while additional homecare packages were welcome, the 500 such packages announced a year ago had still not been fully delivered.

"Medical expert advice is that 5000 such packages are actually needed to meet the requirements of elderly people," she said.