David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of our witnesses and thank them for their opening statements and work in this area. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the recruitment crisis in the home care sector. Many of the issues raised by all of the groups are common and may of the solutions proposed are similar. I cannot ask questions of every group. Unfortunately, each member has a strict time limit of five minutes. I hope we will reach all the witnesses in the questions asked by all the members of the committee.

I will start with Mr. Musgrave and refer to some of the points he made in his opening statement, which I believe we would all agree with. The first point was that home care is in the midst of the most acute recruitment crisis it has experienced in the history of the State. Mr. Musgrave also spoke about the need to hire 3,000 additional home care workers in 2022 just to stand still and provide the current level of 24 million hours of home care. This is before we look at any additionality in the years ahead. That is the additional workforce needed. Mr. Musgrave also spoke of the need for a national home care workforce strategy. Other groups called for something similar and, again, I agree with them.

One paragraph of Mr. Musgrave's opening statement is important. He rightly gave credit to the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler, for announcing the establishment of a cross-departmental workforce advisory group. I will ask a number of questions based on Mr. Musgrave's opening statement and the opening statements of the other groups. Will the advisory group that has been established look at graded career structure?