Mr. Michael Harty:

Home and Community Care Ireland, HCCI, is the representative body for private home care providers providing roughly 100,000 hours of home care each year, employing roughly 6,000 staff, caring for around 8,500 clients and contributing roughly €36 million to the economy each year. In putting together our budget submission, we have been very cognisant of two background facts. They include our current economic difficulties and the imperative to ensure our limited resources are put to the best use possible. Due to our future demographic profile, any issues or difficulties we face will only be magnified in the years to come.

Our budget 2014 recommendations call on the Government to make better use of existing resources that will incur no extra cost to the Exchequer and follow the Government's own stated policy of money following the patient enabling older people to remain at home for as long as possible. I will set out our five principal proposals. In line with the Minister's often stated aim of getting money to follow the patient, we question the wisdom of ring-fencing €1 billion of the total older persons' budget of €1.4 billion for residential care through the fair deal scheme. We call on the Government to amalgamate budgets to allocate funding in accordance with patients' needs and wishes with potential savings for 2014 alone of €69 million.

In an effort to ensure we are providing the best quality care to the maximum number of older people, we call on the Government to ensure all home care provision that falls outside what is provided directly by the HSE is allocated in an open and transparent manner with quality provision being the focus of any outsourcing. This would entail stopping the use of section 39 funding for home care provision and instead redirecting those funds to the home care package scheme where there is more accountability and transparency. Indeed, well-publicised internal HSE reports have shown the gross inefficiencies of using section 39 funding for home care provision. Redirection could save a further €48 million in 2014.

Our remaining recommendations call on the Government to do the following: reform social welfare regulations to incentivise people to take on work in the home care sector, which is not currently the case; double the existing €50,000 ceiling for tax relief to €100,000 to allow more complex cases to be looked after at home and to avail of tax relief; and to extend the IT47 definition of incapacitation to include home care requirements as a result of old age or infirmity. I thank the committee and look forward to any questions in the question and answer session.