Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. I will work in reverse. With regard to CHO 9 and the lack of peer support workers, the whole premise of Sharing the Vision, our new mental health policy, is key supports in the community with peer support and people with lived experience of recovery, hospitals and all the community supports needed. I am surprised to hear that and I will look into it. I will write back to the Deputy. I cannot give him a specific answer. Earlier this week, I met with the department in the HSE on recovery and education. There is funding for 21 posts that are currently being recruited. I will write back to the Deputy with a substantive answer.

Home care is one of the most important services we can provide. I am in a unique position; my budget for home care this year was approximately €660 million. It will be €700 million in budget 2023. Some 56,000 people will receive home care today, but there are unfortunately 6,200 on a waiting list because, although their home care provision has been funded, we do not have the workforce to deliver the home care. When people are on a waiting list, we have to prioritise the most complex and vulnerable cases and those that are at end of life. It is disappointing that we have to do that. Working with the Department, we put in place a strategic workforce advisory group earlier this year. A huge amount of work was done with the private, public and voluntary providers and across all Departments. Some 16 recommendations were made. I have taken on board each one and we are putting them in train. I will speak to three of the recommendations that are important. The first is that the new tender from the HSE will include the living wage, currently €12.90, to be paid to anyone providing home care. The HSE rates, as the Deputy will be aware, are higher than that, but some of the private contractors do not pay that. Second, mileage will have to be included and paid to anyone travelling. The third is that we will move quickly to extend the permits outside the EU to bring in workers. For example, 1,700 people are working in the nursing home sector who came in on those types of permits. I hope we will be able to move quickly on that.

On dementia-specific home care supports, when I came into the post initially I ring-fenced 5% of all home care hours for dementia-specific care. In next year's budget it will be 15% because we found out quickly that we were exceeding our targets. Some people with dementia do not like going to a day care centre or to a specific day care centre. We are providing home care in the home for those people at a cost of €1.7 million. I originally put that in place during Covid-19 and it has been retained. I will pass over to my colleague, Mr. Brunell, to speak about the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2015.