Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am under pressure for time so will try to be as quick as I can. I apologise if I cannot wait for the reply; I will catch up on the transcript and will stay for as long as I can.

I might be able to help with regard to the difficulty in recruiting home help staff. As the Minister will know already, I represented home help staff for long years. They are a fantastic bunch, mostly women, and we do not have enough of them. Clearly if we made their work a more attractive area we would see an uptake. They were the only group not subject to the moratorium and their employment would have remained relatively constant, were it not for the fact that the hours kept being cut back.

According to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, DPER, the average cost of providing an hour of home help is €23.20. For not-for-profit or directly employed home helps, we are talking about a considerable reduction on that rate. My information is that it is somewhere around €17 per hour. We are already looking at a considerable saving. The figure of €23.20 is arrived at because there is a huge amount of outsourcing to what are effectively massive global multinational corporations. I understand that there was some dispute in the courts and I spoke to the Minister of State, Deputy McEntee before she was appointed to a different role.

It strikes me that if the Minister wants to increase the uptake in the number of home help staff, he should focus on those areas where employment is that bit more attractive, namely, in the smaller agencies. Effectively, the smaller agencies have been frozen out by the tendering and the other competitive processes, in which they cannot compete because their margins are extremely low. All of the money that they get goes directly into the provision of home help services. For the smaller not-for-profit agencies to thrive, they are going to need the HSE to give them a hand. It would be beneficial for people who need home help services, for the home helps themselves and, indeed, for the small providers if some direction could be given from the level of the Department of Health in that regard because it is a case of survival of the fittest. The people who are going to suffer are the smaller agencies.

I firmly believe that the directly employed home help staff and smaller agencies actually provide much better value for money. I do not think anyone would dispute that. There are big players in this, multinational corporations that are in the business of making hundreds of millions in profits. There should be a greater focus on the smaller operators whose margins are tight. That would, in turn, improve the take-up of people who are willing to go into that type of work. What they need is stability. I spent years in and out of the Labour Court trying to come up with a contract that would provide them with some level of stability. Clearly, if the demand is there - and it is - stability and continuity of employment should be sustainable. There is not a Deputy in the House who has not had people through their door looking for more home help hours. The example was given of a couple with an entitlement to 20 hours who are lucky if they actually get eight, nine or ten hours. The demand is there. The capacity exists for the Government to give the staff more sustainable contracts of employment. It has long been a mystery to me as to why that will not happen.

If I may refer briefly to the hospital waiting list figures and the emerging practice of publishing them at 6 p.m. on a Friday, 8 September was the last time it was done. My office was ringing to see what time the figures would be out. I understand the Minister does not do it personally-----