Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The reopening of day care centres falls under my remit. To date, 120 of them have opened and more are opening every month. There are challenges, though. For example, I visited two facilities in north Tipperary yesterday, the Dean Maxwell nursing home and the Community Hospital of the Assumption in Thurles. They are both long-term residential care facilities. When people attended them for day services, they used to mix with the service users who were living there. Those facilities were the day service users' home from home. Unfortunately, when people are coming in from the community where the Delta variant is still prevalent, it causes challenges for the residents living there.

I am delighted that the majority of stand-alone day care centres - 120 - are back open. We have more work to do in that regard, but it is important that we get all of them open as soon as possible. We are also working hard on the matter of respite services. They have opened in some areas, but we need to get them opened everywhere so that we can support older people, including those with a mental illness, to age well at home.