Mr. Joseph Musgrave:

One of the key missing planks is that there is no workforce strategy from Government level. It has a policy supporting home first, and has, to its credit, boosted funding. However, it has not explained or set out how we can hire the necessary staff, which includes many of the points raised by other contributors here around travel time and also qualifications, which I mentioned.

Our disappointment is that although the Government has a nexus cross-departmental working group, nothing has happened. It has not met. We have not been invited, other than to give a brief enumeration of issues. We have not been invited to attend a session. We have not been told its timeline. We have been talking about this for 18 months to two years. With the HSE, I get a sense of urgency. I met with Ms Anne O'Connor and Ms Sandra Tuohy on Monday. When the deputy head of the HSE is meeting me to talk about home care recruitment, I get a sense that the HSE understands the depth of the problem.