Ms Marie Butler:

Yes. One of the recommendations in the review is that there would be a permanent national forum set up for all matters relating to healthcare assistants so that there would be a one-stop shop for everything to do with healthcare assistants, from which would permeate all that needs to happen to make this grade of worker work within the community settings, the acute settings or wherever. It has been agreed by the HSE to set that up, but that is where it sits. It has not been resourced. They have not put the people in. That needs to be done. The idea of the permanent forum is that it would look at the healthcare assistant role in all of the different services and develop it from there as a support to the professional grades. It is not in competition with the professional grades. We are not looking to be nurses, doctors or anything else. They just want to do their role professionally in a way that they can and to develop to the roles that they can do.

In the report, there are approximately 16,500 people in support grades who could be considered healthcare assistants. That does not include the 6,000 home helps or, as they are called now, healthcare support assistants. As I stated, that is the only report that I am aware of independently conducted into a support grade, and yet Sláintecare is moving everything that moves into the community and there is no report being done on how support grades operate currently in the community, let alone how they are supposed to operate in the future. While we accept fully the importance of medical care, diagnostics, etc., the only impediment to the healthcare system being rolled out is it is not happening.