Mr. Niall Redmond:

We are working through a range of support issues in our joint policy with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. It is not just the bricks and mortar piece but the wraparound supports that are required in the community. We are considering supports such as the support co-ordination services provided through local authorities. I refer to ALONE in particular and a number of other organisations that provide lower level but important support to keep people at home. It ranges from meals on wheels to befriending services to check-ins and other important community based supports.

We are doing significant work on how we can increase the provision of meals on wheels, improve the service and expand support co-ordination. Considerable work has been done on that and the community call in the context of the pandemic and that has given us good insight into the expansion of those services.

We have a programme of work with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on creating the infrastructure of a middle ground between the person's home and the nursing homes. A pilot project in Inchicore is being developed with a range of stakeholders to find and design a model that will work for the future and to identify how it could be integrated with the home care scheme. A number of different strands are in development. As they evolve further, it will be important to bring them all together into a coherent framework around the model of care and type of service we provide into the future.