Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending the meeting and for the work they have been doing over the summer. I have seen some of them at meetings of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response. It is very good to see Dr. O'Reardon at this meeting today.

I want to focus on dementia and the cost of providing nursing home and long-term residential care services to people with dementia. Some 7,500 people are diagnosed with the condition every year and that number is increasing as a result of better detection and awareness and also because people are living longer. Dementia is a terminal illness and some 25% of people admitted to hospital have the condition as part of their presentation. While we want people to be cared for in their homes in the long term as far as that is possible, we recognise that residential care is an important part of dementia care at different stages of the treatment of the illness. It is a very particular type of care and a more expense type of care because of the nature of the additional social care that must be provided and the different presentation and profile of people in residential care focused on dementia compared with other forms of residential care. I would like to hear the witnesses' thoughts on that before we discuss more specific issues. What is the cost of providing long-term residential care for somebody with dementia as their primary illness compared with the cost of care for other people in long-term residential care?