Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to come back to the area of care assistants, which I accept is a very specialised one. I was involved with a community hospital that wanted to take on people under the JobBridge programme but was told that regulations did not allow it. In fairness, the hospital wrote to the Minister, who changed the regulation. The whole reason the community hospital wanted to take on people under JobBridge was to train them so they could then go out and work and provide home care in the community. We are not doing enough on that. Obviously suitable people must be found, as not everyone is suited to work as a care assistant, but we should look seriously at training local people in local communities who want to do this type of work but do not know where to get the training.