Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 8 November 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
General Scheme of the Health (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2023: Discussion
Mr. Paul Flanagan:
We would but it is difficult to specify or forecast with absolute accuracy what the additionality might be with regard to numbers coming into the scheme. We can build in some working assumptions against the bedrock of 11,000 current participants. For costing purposes, we can take some examples around perhaps a 10% increase, which obviously yields in excess of 1,000 new additional units becoming available to the rent-a-room process. That allows us then to cost what the cost to the Exchequer and to the State might be, overall, as a package of care and as an outcome of the process. Our bedrock is the current participants on the scheme of 11,000. That number has increased marginally over the past number of years, as I understand it. Our focus in bringing through this objective would be to further increase that number, although, as I say, it is difficult to determine accurately at this point what that precise number be.
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