The government has done a u-turn on the 10,000 hours cut it had announced last week for Personal Assistants to people with physical disabilities.

The partial reversal of cuts in frontline health services by Minister for Health James Reilly was given a mixed reaction after it was announced last night.

The campaign group Older and Bolder said the decision to reverse cuts to personal assistant hours for people with a disability was “only a partial response to the distress inflicted on vulnerable people by promised cuts to home-care services”.

It called for “a reversal of the decision to cut home-help services and home-care packages which benefit older people, children with life-limiting illnesses and people with disabilities who need home-care services”.

Labour Party chairman, Tuam deputy,  Colm Keaveney said the decision “proves that this Government is willing to listen to the people and to its own backbenchers”.

The move was announced by the Department of Health three hours after yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.

The Minister informed the Cabinet that he had instructed the HSE to continue to provide personal assistant services to those who got them now, in accordance with their needs.

However, disability activist and campaigner Michael Corbett, told Midwest news today that while the reversal on the decision to cut PA hours to people with physical disabilities is welcome, it’s not enough. He insists that he and other campaigners will continue the fight to have the cuts to home help hours and home care packages for the elderly and for children also reversed.