David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It was announced in October. We are in the middle of a crisis. The Government provided additional money that we all supported to provide additional home help hours. Budget 2021 provided for 5 million hours. Obviously, Covid had an impact on delivering some of those hours, but so too did the lack of staff. That recruitment crisis is one of the reasons we cannot deliver the level of home care we need.

Through the Chairman, I make the point that the committee needs to write to the HSE and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, to get answers to these questions. Is the working group formally up and running? What is the composition of the group? Does it have terms of reference? Can those terms of reference be provided to the committee? To what timeframes is the group working? When will we see progress? It strikes me there is an urgency coming from our guests today and from the committee. We have agreed to shine a spotlight on this issue because of the work our guests have done, their lobbying and the correspondence we have received from their groups. We are here to get answers to these questions. Our time is limited. I will leave it at that because we will also have an opportunity to contribute in the second session. The best thing the committee could achieve today is to find out what that group is doing, how urgently it will report back and what are its terms of reference. If the terms of reference are not right, we will not solve many of the problems that have been identified. I apologise for not being able to put questions to the other groups; it is due to the very strict time limit we have.