Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming. This is a follow-up from the previous meeting this morning. We are in the middle of a recruitment crisis and there are families who cannot get the carers they want. On some level I also accept these people probably do not care where the service comes from, whether it is the private or public sector, once their loved one can stay at home.

I agree with the witnesses that what we do not want happening here is what happened in nursing homes. The investors were ready to invest and tax breaks were given so - shock and horror - the obvious happened. I suppose at this point there is a recruitment difficulty even with the HSE. There is another element to the crisis in the sense that we are also reliant at this point on private providers, which cannot recruit. We all welcome the workforce advisory group and it has had informal meetings but I am not entirely sure who attended those. None of this will matter until we see some action. There was talk about bespoke solutions that may suit certain people with the likes of tax breaks, for example. That is not necessarily the overall solution but it is a stop-gap answer because we are under pressure.

What is the view of the witnesses of those proposals or what the Minister has alluded to? We could be looking at tax breaks and ensuring people do not lose out on SUSI grants. We might be facilitating people to work in the health service and, for want of a better term, to do "nixer" jobs at the weekend. We also have to deal with the fact that travel expenses are a complete disaster. It seems that with private operators there is an inconsistency across all CHO areas with respect to terms. Will the witnesses speak to that, although we accept that the ultimate solution is for the State to put clear pathways for workers to deal with pay, conditions and expenses so the required service can be directly offered?